How to Raise a Hitman
by Aerynx
Summary: As the poor chosen Shinigami of this world, you really do get bored. The Mafia, the Mob, the Triads, the Hitmen, they just did her job for her. So, she decided to become one of them. It was all fun and games until a little boy in rags came up to her holding all his pocket money asking her to kill his abusive parents. Oc-centric. Pre-arcobaleno gen.
1. The Over Glorified Title of Death

**Hey guys, this was a concept I thought of when I was scrolling through a bunch of writing prompts one day. I thought it was fun and I enjoyed writing this. If you like it, do leave a review so I can get the memo to continue~ (that is, after mid-terms)**

* * *

Out of all the Shinigami, all the versions of death, the reaper, whatever your culture or species calls us, I was the one that had to be assigned to this world of all places.

After the strenuous two decades of schooling I did in order to be assigned to a world, I got assigned to the one where I literally wouldn't need to do anything.

It felt like such a waste of my not-really-alive life.

The world I was assigned to had this uncanny ability to have it's underworld flourishing completely separate to it's regular _legal_ life. There were whole families of Underworlders that had their own countries under their rule, it was borderline impressive.

The Mafia, the mob, the triads, the yakuza were just a few to name. The whole world was basically under the rule of two factions that ran completely separately to each other.

The Underworlders would claim territory, protect it and run their own flourishing illegal dealings and businesses. The Government would run the legal economy and deal with politics, national conflicts and international dealings. It was disturbing how flawlessly it seemed to work when in reality, it shouldn't.

I mean come on, there was a whole man-made island made purely for Underworlders. It was the constantly flooded with thieves, gangsters, hitmen, assassins and almost any 'evil' job a regular person could think of.

The flourishing of both the legal and illegal faces of the world didn't manage to prevent poverty completely as it did with solving other world problems. There were still homeless, orphanages and even kids that lived on the streets and alleyways. If they worked hard enough or sold their bodies and/or souls to the Underworlders, they did have a chance to live. But the life they would live had no chance of being a peaceful one.

International wars were the only time both the Underworlders and the Government would associate with each other.

The first time it happened, it shocked her. To see all these stuck-up people shoving away their superstitions and stereotypes to ally together to assert dominance over other territories, it was amusing.

What surprised her the most was this world's knowledge of flame cores and their abilities to access and utilise their soul flames. It was interesting, to say the least, from all the worlds she had visited for training or just for fun, none of them had used their soul flames purely for their own categorised characteristics.

This ability seemed to only extend across the Underworlders though, the Government hadn't seemed to have discovered nor practised the techniques but with crossbreeding and such, the majority of the population had at least dormant flames awakened within them.

With the active nature of their flame cores, Lilith found herself not needing to actually 'reap' their souls so to say. She didn't need to help them pass on since their soul flames would lead them to the afterlife themselves.

It was somewhat lucky for her. There was a point in which their use of soul flames could surpass the threshold of unneeded assistance to needing her to drag them by the hand to the afterlife.

An example of that would be her poor friend Madara, he was currently stuck in a world where they used their flames to the point of morphing their inner powers into other elements. Whenever they died, she was sure that he drop-kicked a few of them in bulk to the afterlife because of how many he needed to manage.

It was definitely amusing though. He was so spiteful of her when she told him how lax her one was.

Though, this 'Vindice' group she had found was not to her liking whatsoever. They seemed well past their natural lives and should have been sent to the afterlife at least decades ago. It was unnerving.

Their flame cores were essentially dead, yet someone had been feeding them with artificial life for quite some time now.

She deemed them worthy of a visit.

* * *

The welcome call she received as she took a step into their base was not pleasant. She was instantly assaulted by the nearest officer as they attempted to pin her down and arrest her. As the personification of death for this world, it was much too easy for her to strike them down.

She very much wanted to send their souls on but decided to contact the source of the artificial soul flames before doing so. She wasn't above letting them stay for a while longer if they had a purpose, it was the small things that made bigger entertainment after all.

It was unexpected when a fully bandaged 'baby' stormed out to greet her.

"Who are you and how did you get in here?" He demanded.

She smirked at him, her red eyes glimmering in amusement. Oh, she liked this.

"Hello," she cooed at him, much to his visible displeasure. "My name is Lilith, and you?"

His cautious and intimidating glare never left her form. "Bermuda."

She reached a hand up to the top of her ponytail and ran her fingers through the long black locks. She sighed, "Bermuda,"

"**Where are you getting these artificial flames of yours?"**

His body stiffened under the sudden flare of killer intent and several of the bandaged forms surrounded her in a silent threat.

"Who are you?" He hissed out.

She stood casually and glanced over the state of her perfectly manicured red nails, "You may know me as 'Death'." She glanced at him with a playful look and a smirk inching its way onto her face. "I have come to seek the reason for all these long-passed souls being fed artificial life."

He cocked his head at her, his eyes would be narrowing in suspicion if she could see them, "And what do you intend on doing with that information?" he questioned.

She simply smiled, "I will be sending them on if your reasons aren't worthy, of course. That is my job after all."

The child raised a hand to wave off his subordinates that were prepared to attack her. The borderline suffocating nature of her own flames was intimidating, he knew that not even all of them combined would be able to wipe out this woman.

"A man named Checker Face forced our bodies into this situation. We are the survivors of the Arcobaleno."

She frowned and pursed her lips, "I don't like the sound of that… Tell me about these 'Arcobaleno', Bermuda. I will leave your puppets alone for the time being…"

"…but do not expect me to leave you alone forever, I find you all quite…. fascinating."

* * *

The information provided by the Vindice was revealing and most amusing. This Checker Face person had assumed the role of the guardian of the world-holding treasures and had been using Underworlders as batteries for them for centuries.

She wondered whether the man was the reason the world-holders were pacifiers. If so, she'd love to be his friend because that idea was genius and hilariously sadistic. It was great.

She would pay the man a visit eventually. Not now but rather another time.

Bermuda had revealed the Vindice as ex-Arcobaleno, the survivors of the stripping of their world-holders. She wondered who the current Arcobaleno were…

She could wait, that was an adventure for another day. Hm… actually, maybe she'd pay a visit to old Talbot before she went off to Checker Face.

Talbot was a famous wandering engineer, known to Shinigami from world to world and even widely known to those in the Shinigami Realm. She was informed before she set off to this world that Talbot had decided to settle in this Realm.

Lucky her.

The woman located the old engineer quickly with her somewhat in-built soul finder and slipped into his house through the window. She plonked her body onto the couch.

Talbot spared the woman a brief glance before turning back to his current project. "What brings you here today, young Shinigami?"

She sat up in her seat, "I'm pretty fucking old, Talbot. But, I'm here to inquire about the world-holders and stuff since there's not much soul sending for me to do here."

The old man slowly raised his gaze to her, "The 'world-holders' as you know it is known as the Trinisette here. It's formed of three sets of seven objects, two sets of rings, one set of pacifiers."

She gave him a dry look, "Why are there so many of them?"

He hummed, "I would not know, my dear. The two sets of rings are known as the Vongola and Mare rings, they are passed down as heirlooms through two Italian Mafia famiglias."

She leaned over the back of the couch and rested her chin on her forearms. An interested smile stretched across her face, "Oh~?"

"Yes," he confirmed, "The Vongola and Giglio Nero famiglias. The founder of the Giglio Neros was of the same species as the man known as Checker Face, they are seemingly a superior race to humans that never appear to age."

A contemplative look bloomed on her face, "Hmm… the Vindice looked rather upset at how they were used as batteries. You think you can magic something up that'll substitute for that?"

"Why, of course, my dear. To think you would ever doubt my capabilities, I will contact you with how you can help me later on."

"Oh right, okay."

Lilith had unintentionally sealed her fate into a Talbot-produced contract. She didn't regret it though, it was for the good of the soul population. The less Arcobaleno, the less Arcobaleno-Vindice zombies and the less excess dead souls left in the Earth Realm.

"So what should I do to relieve my boredom while I wait?"

He sent her a toothy smile but with his lack of a full set of normal teeth, it was really unnerving to witness. He raised a hand and shooed her off, "Go integrate yourself into the Underworld. Perhaps make a name for yourself and become a hitwoman. Having connections will make resource finding significantly easier."

She blinked at him, "Okay."

Geez, she was so bored she was taking suggestions from old men. Long ago were the days she took orders from no one but herself.

She slipped out of the window and out into the woods that surrounded his small sanctuary.

Time to wreck some bitches.

* * *

…

She sighed to herself.

What exactly had she expected when she took up this job? Fun? Excitement? Thrill?

Yes. She had somewhat expected at least one of these to be fulfilled. But alas, no. Her life was still rather boring.

Lilith had decided on Sicily, Italy to be her new home base since she discovered that it was known as the origin of the Italian Mafia and since the Vongola and Gigi-something Nero were Italian Mafia famiglias she thought it was a good idea.

The first hit she took was actually from Mafia Land but her target was here in Sicily. The guy was unbelievably weak, she somewhat felt bad for killing him because he seemed so incapable of doing anything so bad that he was worth getting assassinated for.

Maybe he was associated with someone eviler.

Ugh, it frustrated her how easily she took people out. Perhaps she should handicap herself…

Well, she abandoned her scythe and left it in the Shinigami Realm already so that was out of the question. Maybe she could learn how to use a gun? Hitmen used guns.

Y'know what? That sounds good.

Lilith ventured through the streets of Sicily to look for some sort of dodgy bar or shop. As she had discovered, most Underworlders gathered information from brokers, bartenders or shop keepers.

She strolled casually into a familiar bar that she had gone to before.

The middle-aged bartender gave her a suggestive look as she walked up to the bar.

"Ah, my sweet. It's wonderful to see you back, how may help such a fine specimen such as you?"

Her lips slipped into a seductive smirk and she leaned over the counter. The split at the top of her black dress shirt shifting down slightly revealing the smallest hint of cleavage. By his reaction, she didn't even need to expose more than was socially acceptable. He was so easy it was funny.

"It's delightful to see you as well. I'm… looking for a good gun dealer, you see."

The man moved closer to her, his hand moving to stroke her cheek gently, "I think I know of a good dealer for something a little more se-"

The other bartender, who looks to be in his late-twenties, cut the middle-aged man off with an intimidatingly charming smile. He had long silver hair that fell over his left eye, he gave off a very powerful and strict aura. Oh, he seemed like a good fight indeed.

The man glanced at her and smiled at her kindly, she pulled back and blinked at him slightly confused at the situation and trying to correct all her observations of him.

The older bartender whom she was trying to get some free information out of grumbled under his breath and moved onto the next customer. He was clearly unhappy with his co-worker for stopping him from potentially getting laid. Not that she would actually sleep with such a man, he was neither attractive physically nor personality-wise.

"How can I help you, young lady." The younger man asked politely. She gave him an apologetic look, "Sorry, I was looking for a shop for sidearms."

He looked her up and down with a contemplative look, he hummed. "Are you new in the business?"

She gave him a suspicious look but complied with his questioning. "…Yes, I'm looking to learn to use a gun because my current weapons are much too suited to me."

He paused for a moment and amusement lingered in his eyes, "I… see. That's very interesting, usually, it's the other way around but we can work with that."

She leaned her elbow on the counter and rested her chin in her palm. "We?"

The man smirked, "Indeed, it would prove to benefit us both. My boss is looking to hire a freelancer anyhow, in exchange for your services we could teach you how to wield a sidearm."

She narrowed her eyes at him playfully. How suspicious and dangerous, she loved it.

Her expression morphed into one of delight and satisfaction to which he smiled back at her equally as satisfied.

The next thing she knew, she was following the strange man to wherever he was taking her without a care in the world.

She didn't even know his nam- oh. She didn't know his name.

"So…" she trailed off, successfully catching his attention. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye and raised an eyebrow in question. "Exactly, what's your name again?"

He smiled, clearly amused. "I am known as Dante, I serve as the Cloud for the Vongola Ottavo."

Lilith blinked, well shit. She didn't think it'd be that easy to get ins with the Vongola. Well… once again, lucky her.

Reading her expressions, he continued, "I suppose you recognise the famiglia name?"

She turned her gaze to the side of the streets and hummed as she walked casually alongside him. "It was simply a passing comment; I only knew that you were quite the powerful famiglia. In what way, exactly, would asking a freelancer to do your bidding be any better than to do it yourself?"

The cloud's smile only grew in amusement to the point where he looked like he was about to laugh. "You have very strong and condensed flames, young lady, I know someone powerful when I see and feel them. Honestly, we do not require much of your services in terms of hits, our boss was mainly keen on finding another fighting partner."

She flat out snorted at that with no shame, "Sounds like fun."

"Oh, trust me. It'll either be really fun or completely miserable, perhaps both."

* * *

Dante held the door open for the woman to walk into the very impressive building before closing it behind him. As they walked through the front doors, a green-haired young woman flew down the halls and towards them with a joyful smile on her face.

She grabbed Lilith's shoulders and her eyes glimmered in excitement, "Dante~! You brought home a girl! And she's pretty toooooo."

Lilith pulled back slightly to make space between her face and the sky's. She was invading her personal bubble way too much and too quickly.

Her cloud rolled his eyes and sighed in fond exasperation, "She's here to fight you for fun."

The woman's smile morphed into a mischievous grin, "Ohoho? You got a feisty one too? I always knew you were a sub, Dante."

He clocked her over the head and walked deeper into the mansion leaving the woman on the floor clutching her head. He knew that giving her a reaction would only encourage her.

Lilith observed the scene in amusement.

_I think I'll like it here. _She thought as she moved to follow the disappearing form of the resident cloud.

The silver-haired cloud slowed his pace slightly to allow the woman to catch up to him. "Please ignore Daniela's comments, it's rather normal in the household."

She smirked teasingly, "Is that so? I won't judge you for being a sub."

A barely noticeable shade of pink dusted his cheeks which he concealed rather nicely with a look in the opposite direction and a cough into his fist. "I'm not a sub…" he commented under his breath.

Lilith grinned mischievously and Dante sighed in defeat, "I think you'll get along just fine with Daniela."

"I think so too~" She sing-songed.

Dante opened one of the large pair of double doors that greeted them at the end of the hallway and gestured her to enter, which she did but froze when she saw who- more like _what _was in the chaos-filled excuse of a dining room.

"Hey, it's someone new!" A brunette mini Daniela called out, running towards her with a small stern looking blonde kid trailing behind him. The 6-year-old was covered in everything you would think of when you thought of a dirty child. Mud, flour, cake batter… what had he been doing, baking in the backyard?

With a mansion this extravagant she thought that they'd have cooks or something, at least a kitchen.

She cringed away from the kid when he got close and accidentally backed into a hard chest which she soon realised was Dante's.

The said cloud leaned over her shoulder to scold the boy, Lilith stiffened up slightly as his breath hit her ear. "Timoteo, Coyote. You're both filthy, go clean up before you cause our guest any more discomfort."

Timoteo, as she had recently learned was his name, had the decency to look sheepishly at her and apologise before running off with the storm boy closely trailing him.

She left out a relieved breath and relaxed her shoulders.

"Not good with kids?" Dante enquired, noticeably amused.

She shot him a pointed look, "You're rather talkative for a cloud."

He gave her a polite tilt of the head and a smile, "I'm an inverted cloud, my territory tends to extend over people rather than lands."

She supposed she wasn't surprised with the information; he was rather accepting of talking to people but she couldn't have been sure nor have made the assumption based on the first impression.

Soul sensing was an easy task for her, locating people was like second nature in her line of work but there was no telling difference between standard and inverted flame types within her senses. Perhaps it was something she had to train up but for now, it seemed that she would need to actively analyse their behaviour to determine such.

Daniela chose to walk in at that moment and smirk slyly when she saw how close the two were standing together, "Ohoho-"

"-no." He cut her off and took a slight step back to give the Shinigami some breathing space.

Honestly, she didn't mind being in close proximity to the man, he seemed like a big teddy bear to her to be completely honest. But as a Shinigami, her preferences were probably slightly twisted.

Dante moved to lean on the nearby wall as Daniela approached the girl.

She held out a hand for the girl to shake, a bright smile worthy of a sky spread across her face, "Hello, I'm Daniela di Vongola. What's your name?"

Lilith stared at her rather formal introduction, slightly reprimanding herself for forgetting that she was a high standing leader of an Underworld gang.

"Ah, my name is Lilith." She started, reaching out and shaking the woman's hand. "No last name."

The other woman gave her an understanding look and Lilith quickly deduced that the sky had assumed she was an orphan.

"Oh, I'm not an orphan." She quickly remedied. Daniela looked surprised and Dante raised an eyebrow, silently requesting for her to continue.

Lilith didn't really want to. She instantly regretted telling them that and wished she thought of just going with the story. How was she supposed to explain how she was born or what she was?

She was the Shinigami, the _Reaper, __**Death.**_ She knew she needed a story but her brain decided to lag at that moment and she knew that anything normal she'd say would be passed off as a lie.

She took too long to think. She sighed and sent the two a flat look, "I'm Death."

Lilith wished she had a camera to take a photo of Dante's perfect expression of 'flabbergasted' and Daniela's interested look.

The sky blinked at the girl a few times before speaking up. "If that's so, why are you here?"

Lilith's face flushed as the wave of frustration she had at this world flooded her veins in one big swoop. She huffed and stomped slightly, "Because you humans are doing my job for me!" she complained.

Dante snorted behind his hand, his eyes wandering to almost anything but the girl that was glaring holes into him.

Daniela was a Vongola blooded girl, through and through. Even if she didn't have her intuition, she felt like she would've believed the red-eyed girl anyway. Her adorable tantrum was so genuine she couldn't help but believe her.

She did feel a little bad for putting her in her little predicament, but she really did want her ship to sail. And yes, she meant DantexLilith, she thought it was way too adorable to not be true.

A thought popped into Daniela's head, "Hey, Lilith?"

The Shinigami paused her glaring, turned to Daniela and tilted her head in question.

"If you're Death… what flame do you have?"

The girl froze and stared at her hands before morphing her expression into a contemplative look.

"That…is a good question. How do you summon your flames?"

The sky smiled at her earnest question, "We call them Dying will flames as they, as we know it, are the manifestation of our determination. My source is usually to protect, it's different for everyone."

Determination, huh?

The two watched their new found friend struggle over the production of her flames. Her lips pressed together in frustration.

It just wasn't working for her and it kind of hurt her to think that she was incapable of doing such a task that all these humans could do. It was degrading and embarrassing.

Her ears flushed red and she let her hands fall to her sides in defeat.

Daniela sent her a soft smile, "It's okay, it's not easy for everyone. It'll come to you when it's time."

Dante watched as the girl made eye contact with him briefly before adverting her gaze and glancing away. He was honestly surprised at how much she struggled with the task, seeing as how powerful and condensed her flames were, yet he understood that flames came to different people in their own ways and time. He wasn't one to judge.

They both knew she was felt ashamed for being unable to do such a task with a title so great as her own. She looked absolutely crushed.

He sighed.

The tense air was shattered several moments later when a familiar pair of kids came running into the room.

"Hi, Mama!" Timoteo called out, running straight into Daniela's arms.

Lilith breathed out sharply and inched her way into the corner between the wall and a nearby display shelf.

Coyote watched her every move as if observing the enemy. She was a foreign entity that he had never seen before.

Lilith chose to sink into the shadows and leave the happy family to their reunion. They didn't need a failure of a Shinigami there with them anyway.

She let her body weld into the shadows as she ported herself back to the Shinigami Realm for some temporary relief. It's not like the world needed her to maintain them anyway, they had Talbot on top of their flame gene.

She wasn't needed.

Within the depths of her self-deprecating thoughts, Lilith missed the sad look her departure brought to Daniela and frown that bloomed on Dante's face when he watched her leave.

They didn't want her to go.


	2. Easy Money

With her sharp departure from the Vongola mansion, Daniela wasn't so sure that the girl would ever come back.

She was angry at herself for asking her about her flames, that question lead her to leave them and she hadn't even had the chance to spar nor make friends with the girl.

She was so frustrated that it spilt over onto her mood, noticeable by her guardians. She ended up having to explain to her guardians that she felt like she just ruined her chance at making a really good friend, she was absolutely furious at herself.

Dante shut her down as soon as the admission spilt out of her lips, even though his words were sharp and held truth, she still felt like it was her fault and it felt bad.

"She'll come back on her own accord. Likely after she finds a source of determination, she'll be back to show off her achievement and show off her powerful flames and we'll be here to praise her for it."

He was right and she knew it. She would just have to be there when she returned. Completely resolved, she pumped her fist and internally cheered the girl on.

_'Go Lilith, you can do it!'_

Her mental cheer squad was crashed and burned by Dante's following statement though.

"Either that or she never returns and instead decides to take our souls to hell and beyond."

She sulked and Timoteo sweatdropped at his eccentric mother. Daniela's storm whacked Dante over the head which he accepted with an amused smirk.

* * *

Lilith, a few whatever weeks later, had long returned to the Earth Realm and had situated herself in an alleyway of one of Sicily's more deserted streets.

As soon as she returned, she had buried herself in hits and assignments to burn off steam and in the hopes that potentially she would trigger her flames during these jobs but alas, that never happened and now she was stuck upset at herself, _again._

She sat in the shadows and silently sulked at the lack of the ability to conjure up flames, glaring holes into her hands.

The newly established hitwoman sighed, it really sucked how she left that mansion. She really thought she'd like it there and she blew her chances to get ins with the Vongola by running away of all things.

They knew what she was as well and how much of a failure she was too. With just a few words and an order, her whole career as a freelancer could go up in flames and she would need to resort to being invisible again.

Only coming down to the Earth Realm when she sensed a distressed and lost soul. Life would be boring again.

She sighed and pushed herself up to her feet. Maybe she should take another set of hits or another set of drinks, maybe both. They both sound great right now.

She wandered down the nearest bar, no it wasn't Dante's bar, it was just a simple small and dodgy one in one of the corners of Sicily. People either cringed away when they saw her or gazed at her presence in awe as she entered through the front door. Honestly, she didn't know what the fuck changed. All she did was take on a few hits to burn off steam, it was just basically her normal job just publicized and sped up to a certain degree.

She strolled up to the bar and plonked her ass on one of the stools, the bartender was with her not even a second later.

"Lady **Reaper**, how may I serve you this evening?"

If she was drinking anything, she definitely would have spat it in his face. She coughed into her fist awkwardly and raised an eyebrow at him, "Reaper, you say? Is that what people have been calling me?"

The bartender nodded politely, "In response to your large success in consecutive hits in such a small amount of time people have begun to refer to you as such. Would you like a drink, my lady?"

She huffed in disbelief, she doubted Dante nor Daniela were the types to start such rumours, that seemed way too far lower in both care and intensity than what they could've done if they were feeling petty, it must have been an amusing coincidence.

She glanced off to the side and twirled a few strands of hair between her fingers.

"Do you have soju? I just want a shot. Grape preferably."

He graced her with a curt and polite nod, "Coming right up."

Lilith leaned her elbow on the counter and observed the prying eyes that were still glued to her. How interesting it was to have a title that was her actual title yet unknown to those that knew her as such.

She always did her research on her targets though; she always took the ones that were going to die soon anyway. 'Only take them if their clocks are low', she always said. Turns out the majority of them had low clocks anyway, so there wasn't actually much filtering to do in this industry. If she didn't do the job, someone else would shortly after her.

The bartender slid the glass towards her, she took the shot and left some money on the table. "Keep the change, bartender dude." She called out over her shoulder as she walked straight out of the building and finally away from those annoying pairs of eyes.

Out of sight and hearing range for the general population she patted out the invisible dust from her grey skirt and continued her walk to nowhere in particular. Maybe she'd pay this Checker Face person a visit first then take on a few more hits depending on how the conversation goes.

Finding Checker Face was more difficult than she had initially expected but not impossible at all. His soul was so noticeably older than anyone else's, perhaps even older than her own but unlikely older than Talbot's.

It took her a shameful few hours to locate him despite the harsh differences in the visible appearance of his soul in compared to _everyone_ that was remotely near him. How he hid himself was an absolute mystery that she had no shame in asking for.

She was immediately greeted with a cup of tea and a smile by the young-looking white-haired man. "Hello Reaper, to what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you this evening?"

Lilith sat herself opposite the man, dropping herself on the chair at the table. She got straight to the point, it wasn't in her nature to do otherwise. "The pacifiers, I've been informed that you seemed to be the earliest one to be in possession of them. Who gave them to you?"

His eyes narrowed at the question. How peculiar, she was very… informed, more so than he was expecting. She was also so painfully familiar. Unless…

"By any chance are you the new Shinigami of this world?" The woman blinked at him, slightly surprised at his question. Not many people caught on that on the first encounter, but she supposed he wasn't just anyone.

She sent him a flat look, this must've been Lolanthe's bitch. "Yes, if you know of us then l suppose Lolanthe probably gave them to you."

His eyes shot wide open in surprise and alert, "You know Lolanthe? Is she alive?!"

Ahahahah, definitely her bitch.

"If she were alive then I wouldn't be here, now would I?"

The man deflated slightly at the confirmation.

"I see…"

She sat back and observed the man, he looked rather scrawny to be Lolanthe's type. Well, unless she was suddenly into subs instead of doms and also somehow lost her obsession with creepy tall people- no, that wasn't possible. "By any chance, is that not your true form?"

He supplied her with a suspicious look, "Why do you ask?"

She gave him a sheepish look. Whilst she didn't think that was an offensive question to ask a centuries-old man, it still might've been.

"Sorry, you just don't seem to be the type of person my sister was into."

He clenched his jaw at the mention of their relation, there were visible cords in his neck, "Your sister, huh…? I suppose that would mean that there would be no clinging onto the slight chance she would still be alive. If she was dead, you would be the first to know."

Lilith grimaced slightly, "No, there really isn't. I did it for years and likely you have been for even longer; I know the feeling of her soul like the back of my hand and it's very much no longer there. I'm truly sorry."

He let out a sharp sigh and leaned back to release any form of tension, "Right, well. What did you need from me, sister of Lolanthe?"

Lilith sent him a half-playful smile.

"Do you happen to be my brother-in-law?" He rolled his eyes in good nature.

"I suppose so, younger sister of mine."

Lilith was somewhat grateful for the fact that her sister had been close with this man. Whilst it was extremely saddening to know that there were others suffering alongside her due to her sister's demise, it was nice to have a few people that would have her back when she was here.

"My name's Lilith, Checker Face. I was informed of your use of humans as pacifier batteries and I was wondering if you would be willing to work with Talbot and solving this issue."

The man sent her a dark look, "Humans have been nothing but burdens to myself during my time alive. It's exhausting having to look after them and quite frankly the small price of seven people every few decades seems rather light in my personal opinion."

"So that's a no then?"

"Yes, that would be a no."

She sighed, "I suppose that's understandable."

Fucking humans of 300 years ago. Why do you have to screw things over like this?

She slid the chair back and stood up.

"If that's your answer then I have no more to ask of you."

He nodded in understanding behind the rim of his teacup. Hers left cold and untouched on the surface of the wooden table, "Do keep in touch though, little sister." She smiled sincerely.

"But of course." She paused for a moment and blinked curiously at him.

"By the way, how exactly did you hide so well from me?"

He simply smiled serenely at the girl and waved her off.

* * *

She huffed out a breath of relief as soon as she got a safe distance away from her so-called brother-in-law's residence. Behind her sarcastic outer persona and he somewhat calm façade, she was freaking out. God, he was kind of intimidating.

Lilith reached her arms above her head and stretched out her muscles with a nice big groan before letting them fall lifelessly to her sides.

Well, with nothing else to do, she might as well go take some more hits. She always seemed to go back to those. She supposed it was because it was the closest thing she could do in line with what she had studied and trained for during her decades of schooling, and she simply wanted her time to not be a waste.

Now, where to this time? Mafia Land. The home of the best hits one can find, with the best prices but of course. Since the land was so international, all the rich people sent their job requests there to attract the strongest from all over the world.

After arriving on the beaches of Mafia Land, Lilith just stood and stared at the place for a while, contemplating her life. Her landing had been rather clumsy on her end and she stumbled slightly before regaining her footing.

She blamed it on the fact that heels don't mix with really soft man-made sand.

It was late in the night by now and everything was dark. The lights shining from within the buildings and the small street lights were the only thing showing life within the island residence area in which she had landed herself.

Lilith began her venture through the dimly lit streets of the Italian sector.

Glancing at the series of apartments and hotels she passed, she realised how badly she really needed to get a place to live. Maybe a place on Mafia Land would be a good choice since she always ends up coming back here. She'd probably just rent a place for a while until she found a suitable home that fit her needs.

The nightlife of Mafia Land was to be expected and very much exact to the stereotypes that were laid on them in their line of work. Both drunk and sober Underworlders filled the streets with people, the silent streets morphed into chaos as she approached the commercial district where most of the bars were situated. Prostitutes, mafioso, thieves… The whole lot of them and more were present.

Hm, it was annoying that the job desk was in this district. It was way too bright and way too touchy for her preferences. Her ass was almost grabbed a few times and she was rubbed against by a few woman's breatiscles before they had a good look at her face.

Her heels clicked on the concrete as she strolled down the main streets, people gave her appreciative glances and moved out of her way when it started to get too crowded to move comfortably.

She stopped in front of the request building and pushed the glass doors open. She immediately gathered stares that she ignored completely. She walked up to the request board.

She didn't really care for the high stakes missions that held too much secrecy and Mafia politics within them, so she always went to the job board. More difficult hits with less annoying paperwork than the ones that required her to go to the actual desk to request.

She ripped the one with the highest numbers on it and pulled it closer to her so she could read it.

_Alessandro Cancio, an apparent asshole drug dealer that has been managing to scam people off while keeping his identity safe. His name has been recently discovered so a hit was placed on him for a fuck ton of money. Heh, nice._

Lilith closed her eyes for a moment and huffed in annoyance. He was situated much too close to the Vongola mansion than she felt was comfortable.

But, she would grit her teeth and bare it.

Lilith stormed over to the counter and dumped the paper on the desk, "I'm taking this one." She stated flatly.

The woman on the other side of the desk spared her a brief glance, her eyes clear of emotion, probably used to this kind of thing by now, before sliding the paper into her own hands and scanning the paper. Moments later, the woman placed the request sheet back on the countertop.

"It's processed, have fun, Reaper."

"Thanks, desk lady." She replied, turning on her heels to walk out of the building. Her eyes were locked on the paper in her hands as she scanned through for any extra details she might've missed.

The other desk worker next to the monotone desk lady was a refreshing amount more brave than anyone else she had met after taking that series of hits.

He hollered to her and waved, "Her name is Bianca!"

Lilith paused at the doors and glanced over her shoulder to lock the desk lady in eye contact. With her request paper still in hand, she simply smiled.

"Thanks, desk lady." The woman nodded in acceptance and completely ignored her flailing co-worker. Lilith had mad respect for this desk lady, now she was her _favourite_ desk lady.

Walking out into the night through the quieter streets, Lilith only paused and lifted her gaze from the paper when she felt a little soul run and stop in front of her, blocking her path.

She stood still for a while, simply staring at the boy in silence before speaking up. She gifted him a curious look, "May I help you, little man?"

The boy looked young, like 7-years-old young. His face was bruised and the limp in his step caused her to believe that the rest of his covered body would've likely been beat and bruised as well. She somewhat pitied him.

His hair was naturally spiked back, and he had naturally single curl sideburns that were honestly quite adorable and equally as outrageously against the laws of physics. Combined with the determined look he had in his eyes as he stomp-limped over to her, she found him positively endearing.

He clumsily stuffed hands into his pockets and dragged out a large wad of cash and a few coins on top of it. The boy grabbed her free hand and stuffed all the money into it. Lilith was so amused at his blunt courage and curious at what he needed, that she just let him do what he wanted.

His lip was swollen, and he had noticeably lost a few teeth in the exchange. His voice came out like more of a muffled hoarse whisper due to his obvious exhaustion and injuries.

"Please kill my father." He requested sharply.

She frowned for a moment in silence, leaving the money to sit in the palm of her hand. Honestly, it wasn't nearly enough to hire her for a hit, but she really didn't care at the moment anyway, it wasn't like she was broke or anywhere near it.

She gave him one look over before shoving the money back into his hands. The completely crushed and defeated look that bloomed on his face was honestly upsetting to _her_ and she had seen more deaths than anyone else in this world, he looked miserable.

She walked past the scrawny kid, whose body was frozen in shock and defeat, scooped him up as she passed and tossed him over her shoulder. She sent the boy a glance when not even a groan erupted from him when he landed. She knew for a fact that her shoulder was bony as fuck and the kid likely had at least one bruise on his mid-section.

She frowned, "Come on, brat. I'm hungry and I want to get some dinner before I kill anyone."

That was a half lie because she really never got hungry but the way he just laid there limply and let her do her thing was fucking heart-breaking. If she couldn't feel him breathing or feel his soul still burning, she would've thought he was dead in her arms.

It was disturbing how used to the pain he was. Honestly, at this point, she'd be willing to kill his dad for free.

* * *

Lilith walked into the first decent looking hotel she saw and requested a bedroom for two people, her and her new brat. She said that in those exact words.

The counter lady smiled discretely at her bluntness and handed her the room key as requested. Lilith slid the key off the counter and immediately began to make her way to the elevator.

"Please have a pleasant stay, Lady Reaper."

Lilith paused and sent the girl a side glance, her eyes ran from eye contact to the little name badge on her breast where she paused and stared at for a few moments.

_'Sofia'_

Hm, okay.

She turned her attention back in front of her and continued to walk to the lifts without a care in the world, "Thanks, counter lady."

The counter lady hand to physically prevent herself from snorting in front of a customer.

* * *

The Shinigami bent over and dropped the kid onto the soft mattress. He sank into it slightly and dropped his hands to the mattress at his sides to steady himself. After letting him go, Lilith wandered over to close the door and flick on the lights.

He flinched at the contrast.

Lilith leaned herself on a nearby wall and glanced over to him.

"So," she started off, "What's your name, brat?"

He stared at her in wonder for a moment before stuttering out his name, "R-renato." The woman smiled lightly at him, "Alright, Renato. Now, what's your dad's name? Full name would be ideal but the first name would do."

He averted his eyes and stared intently at his feet, the guilt of requesting such an act must've started to catch up with him.

"Alessandro… Alessandro Cancio."

Lilith's jaw dropped an inch at his admission. Her reaction wasn't normal so the kid kept sending her self-conscious glances every now and again until she regained her composure.

She straightened herself up and chortled. The noise startled the kid but she dismissed it as if she saw nothing so to save what little was left of his dignity and self-confidence.

"Right, so. Really, you really don't have to pay me for that one 'cause I literally walked out of the job hall with your dad on a hit anyway. He was gonna die whether you came to me or not."

She dropped her back onto the mattress and sighed as she sunk into the cushion, "It was quite admirable of you to get the guts to come out and seek me of all people."

He just stared forward with his shoulders slumped.

Lilith swung herself back up into a sitting position and sighed harshly before standing again and swiping the keys off the bedside table.

"Kid." She called out, demanding his attention.

Renato dragged his visibly tired eyes to her own to meet them.

"Can you wash and dress yourself for bed?" He turned his gaze towards the broken skin of his hands and lifted an arm, causing him to wince in pain. He grimaced to himself and shook his head.

Lilith gingerly slipped her hands under his armpits and lifted him into her arms. She strode into the bathroom and placed him on the toilet seat.

She eyed his clothing with hidden distaste, she glanced around the bathroom for something he could wear. Usually, these places came with like a robe thing, right?

She strolled back into the bedroom and swung the closet door open. Ah, there it is. She grabbed at the fluffy material and returned back to his side. The robe was chucked carelessly onto the towel rack and she sliced at his shirt to peel it off.

He flinched at the sight of the blade. She sent him a pitying look but twirled the dagger a few times around her fingers. "This one won't hurt you, kiddo. Not in my hands, not in anyone else's cause no one else will be using it without getting themselves murdered anyway."

Renato turned his head to her and tilted it slightly in question. He preferred to remain silent as his face was still swollen and injured to the point where it physically hurt to talk. His bruises being pressed was something he was used to but not open cuts and infected swelling.

The woman slid a smug smirk onto her face, "This baby is a cursed heirloom that is passed from owner to owner and linked in blood. If someone tried to use it against me or anyone I remotely respected would probably go poof due to insanity. It's drenched in blood, both from intentional and unintentional murder and sacrificial blood, of course."

He sent her a flat look in disbelief but what did he expect in the 'Reaper', of course, she was minorly insane.

She rolled her eyes at him and gingerly peeled off the fabric stuck on his skin, he winced in discomfort but sucked it up in a sharp breath through his teeth.

Soaking one of the towels she found in warm water, she dabbed at his body lightly, gently cleansing off any sweat and grime but leaving the blood clots untouched.

Lilith gave a wry look, healing wasn't her strong point whatsoever. She was used to her job being about being the one to do the damage rather than to fix it.

Gah, she would find a way to fix her brat soon enough.

By the time she had pulled herself back out of her thoughts, she had already absentmindedly finished cleaning his back and torso to a comfortable state. She sent a brief look to his noticeably ripped pants.

"Unless you want me to clean any lower, I suggest you do it yourself."

Renato's face flushed and he shook his head furiously side-to-side. Lilith was very amused.

"Alrighty, I'll leave you to it. Wear the robe after you're done, I'll send room service up soon enough. Allergic to anything?"

With the pink still littered on his cheeks, he gave her another shake of the head, indicating a negative. Her face morphed into a teasing look, "Okay~ Don't worry, brat. It's not like you have anything I've never seen before anyway."

Oh, how Renato wanted to snark back at the woman. He let out a big sigh of relief as he stared at the closed door after she left. She was a lot nicer than he thought she'd be from her reputation.

She was known as a bloodthirsty menace that would kill without batting an eye but from what he'd seen, she was nothing but nice and sarcastically friendly.

He was really grateful that the world had given him the courage and strength to make it out and find her.

* * *

Lilith leaned on the other side of the bathroom door for a moment before pushing off and slipping out to the front desk. She leaned on the counter and rung the bell once, alerting the counter lady back to her post.

"Is there something you need, Lady Reaper?" She asked professionally and politely.

Lilith nodded and slid the small menu that was being displayed on her right to lay in front of her. She pointed at a few words on the paper, "Can I get something soft, maybe like a pasta or a soup of some kind and send it up to the kid? Oh, and get him some fries and a drink of some sort and leave it on my tab."

Counter lady smiled kindly and jotted her order down on paper, "That's just fine, it'll be up as soon as it's prepared."

Lilith nodded along absentmindedly, "Thanks, counter lady. Feel free to grab like a couple of euros for your tip, I don't particularly care how much but don't leave me anywhere near dry."

The girl laughed lightly, "Thank you, Lady Reaper."

She waved her off, "Don't worry 'bout it, just walk the food up yourself, would you? He's a little paranoid, a slightly familiar face is better than none. I'll be back in a couple of hours."

Lilith stalked out of the hotel lobby with sharp steps, the sounds of her heels tapping against the floor and the counter lady's farewell echoing in the otherwise would-be silence.

"Farewell, Lady Reaper, and please do stay safe."

Her eyes shadowed over, and her lips slipped into a smirk. Of course, counter lady, but of course she would. After all, she had a 60k bounty on her brat's asshole of a daddy to complete.

Heh, _easy_ money.

* * *

_**To Angelicsailor: **_**Ohoho~ Don't worry, you'll be seeing plenty of Dante later on in the story.**


	3. New Beginnings

**Review Responses:**

_**To Angelicsailor: **_**Don't worry~ It'll be fluffy for a good chunk of the time. *cough***

_**To Guest, kelsey-kianna and rfec0021: **_**Thank you so much for your reviews! I'm glad you're enjoying it ^^**

**So, here you go! Another chapter~**

* * *

The morning of the following day approached quickly with the sunrises occurring much earlier during the summer times of the year.

Typically, Lilith would reschedule herself to allow for her movements to remain active purely in the dark of the night where she was most comfortable, but in this case, she needed to get this job over and done with as soon as possible.

The sun was peeking over the distant hills, lighting up streets of Mafia Land. The shops were setting themselves up by this point and the rides and events were preparing themselves for another flourishing day of success.

Lilith winced when the sunlight hit her eyes and raised a hand to shadow her vision, squinting at the offending ball of fire.

"Fuck, I'm way too sober for this." She groaned to herself as she sauntered down the street and straight towards a rather typical stuck-up noble looking mansion.

It was a wonder how this man managed to stay under the radar for so long whilst living directly where all the assassins in the world gathered, honestly a stupid move by him. She was surprised that he hadn't had men watching the request board for his name given how much money he had. If he did that, that would have been a smart move. He could've and should've been able to instantly gap it along with his bank account and probably find a nice place to retire for the rest of his life.

But unfortunately for him and fortunately for her, he was a greedy pig that carelessly wanted more money. Not that he would've spoiled Renato with his bank, he was much too stingy to spend his own money on protecting himself as it was already.

Now that she thought about it, what happened to Renato's mother?

She grimaced to herself slightly, he probably wouldn't appreciate her asking about that. Oh well, she'll find out somehow, someplace, hopefully somewhere within this rich-ass looking mansion.

Standing in front of his magnificent mansion, she eyed the windows and anyone within her vision. It was important to note that, yes, she was casually standing within the boundaries of the security fences and gates. No amount of flimsy metal nor electricity would harm her anyway.

She glanced back at the bent and destroyed front gate with a satisfactory smirk. A work of art, she had to admit.

I spy with my little eye… a guard. Finally, some common rich person sense coming out of him. She wandered up to the guard casually with a polite and innocent smile on her face and greeted him with a curt nod of the head before walking past, pushing the front doors open and walking straight in. The guard simply smiled back at her and greeted her good morning before stepping aside to let her in with no suspicion.

Her fake smile was still plastered on her face as she roamed the halls of the mansion in broad daylight.

_Too easy, way too easy._

In general, it was disturbing how easy it was to kill a person. In both her current and original lines of work, it was especially apparent how fragile life is. Normal people's lives were more so than Underworlders because of their lack of training and exposure but considering the level of security detail this man put on himself, he could probably be considered a normal person but with a sorry excuse for a criminal record.

Lilith received kind greetings and bows from the maids as she strolled by each of them. Reaching what looked like the biggest and most fancy pair of doors she had seen in the mansion so far, she reeled back and gave it a nice big kick open.

She received a very attractive and terrified face in return. "W-who are you?!"

Renato's dad was kind of a douche looking DILF, a complete waste of genes if you asked her. A real pity, really.

She glanced around the lounge-type room for a moment before sauntering up to the man with a kind smile, he was frozen in both shock, fear and enchantment. Lilith stroked his cheek softly with an air of comfort hovering around her as her fingers glided gently against the rough stubble on his cheek.

She leaned her face close to his ear and _whispered. _Her breath against his ear ran a delightful shiver through his paralysed and stunned form.

She circled her hand gently across his cheek and around to the back of his neck.

_"Arrivederci~" _She sung with a honeyed hint to her pitch then slit his throat, a dull ring echoed against her eardrums as his life clock struck zero.

Her expression dropped to a blank and she pulled away from the body. She grimaced as she moved to clean the blood off her fingers and dagger with the material of a very expensive looking table cloth.

After twirling the dagger a few times, she expertly slipped it back into its sheath and leisurely walked up to the large paned window that looked over the garden and main entrance, leaving the man's body to soak his own expensive couch with his own blood. She could see so much; it was idiotic ignorance if he was conscious and did not realise hear nor realise, she had blown his own front up.

She sighed irritated; Renato better not have inherited anything more from the man than his face.

Lilith took a quick snapshot of her successful hit before making her way to exit the room, a small sparkle glinted in the corner of her eye, successfully gaining her attention. She paused mid-step and moved to fulfil her curiosity. There were albums upon albums upon albums of pictures of Renato and his wife… and his money.

Each with their own separate shelves. None of them included the man himself and more noticeably, none of them included photos of uninjured people sans Renato pre-4-years-old. His mother was clearly not completely a victim in the situation either. There were images of her and Renato with notes of 'bonding with her son' scribbled in the corners whilst she stood around smiling happily as her child began to bleed out, absolutely revolting.

Lilith ripped out a page full of Renato's childhood photos, mainly baby photos from when he was 1 till when he was about 3 and dropped it into her own shadow. The paper sunk through with no resistance, she resolved that she would keep it for later and that it could be left stored in her home within the Shinigami Realm for safe keeping.

As she passed the first maid after leaving the dreaded room, she waved the first maid that she encountered over.

"Excuse me!"

The maid lowered her head slightly in submission. "Yes, Signora? How may I be of assistance?"

Lilith smiled naturally at her, "Would it be a problem for me to inquire about the first lady of the home? I did not get to see her today."

The servant flinched at the memory, not a good sign.

"I suppose she wasn't so pleasant after all?"

The woman remained silent, her eyes darting around as if she was terrified of being heard. Lilith took the big step forward and threw herself into a blatant and stupid risk.

She rested a hand on her hip and leaned back casually, "I killed the lord of the house, by the way so don't worry about any punishment." She stated matter-of-factly before gliding away.

"Feel free to share the news and share his stuff with the rest of the staff!"

She found satisfaction in the way that the maid had frozen stiff but momentarily relaxed completely with a sigh of relief. Lilith waved a good bye to the kind maid for her indirect information, "Goodbye now, maid lady. Have a good future, now won't you? Don't go about serving at just any rich home."

As she stepped out onto the front porch, she stretched out the muscles in her back with her arms flung straight over her head and let out a nice satisfying groan. "Ahh~" she sighed as she dropped her arms back to her sides.

The clouds decided to split and the sun suddenly reappeared, glaring angrily into her eyes as she ducked between the remains of the Cancio mansion front gates to complete her escape.

Dread and guilt filled her stomach when she noticed the very high position of the sun in the sky. Oh, fuck she left that kid alone for so many hours.

Oh God, she felt terrible.

* * *

Contrary to her original belief, her brat wasn't scared and terrified while hiding in and/or under the bed. He was kind of… mad at her?

The tiny kid stood with his hands on his hips and was standing on the bed to give him more height, completely unaware that extra height didn't mean he was anymore intimidating than he was on flat ground. She should probably have told him that it was actually the opposite because he looked like he was almost about to tip over.

He glared at her in betrayal, which came out as a fully blown pout of adorableness.

She laughed sheepishly, "Sorry?"

Renato dropped all his anger and morphed it into disbelief, he couldn't believe this lady. She was _the Reaper_, she was feared across the world yet here she was laughing half-heartedly, apologising for leaving him alone for so long. He couldn't believe it.

The boy dropped himself onto the mattress with a huff, "So, where did you go? Counter lady just said you needed to go out."

Lilith's mood brightened slightly at the sound of his voice, it was the first time she had heard it without the dulling of his swollen lip. She shot him a grin, "I went to complete the bounty, now we have to go cash it out then we're going on an adventure to the scary lands of mansions."

Renato flinched at the mentioning and Lilith quickly remedied the situation.

"By scary mansions, I don't mean I'm dropping you back off the dungeon-ville." She drawled, "Ever since you decided to come to me with your adorable ass face, you signed yourself off to your own fate. I killed your pops, now you're my brat. Capeesh?"

She closed herself off with a zipping-it-up motion with her fingers. Renato nodded dumbly, slowly processing the fact that his wish came true and that he was finally free. There was a lingering feeling of guilt that sat in the bottom of his stomach, but he tried to ignore it, he asked for it after all.

The woman chucked him one of her spare dress shirts. "Put that on for now, it should be long enough to cover everything. Don't worry about appearances for now, it's the Underworld so they're used to seeing almost anything."

Lilith spun around to give him a few moments of privacy, only turning back when he signalled her with a small mumble of "I'm done".

She eyed him up and down, analysing his injuries. Her shirt was a bit big for him and reached down to his mid-thighs, his pure black boxers peeked out barely from under the silky material. His injuries readily reminded her that she really needed to get him healed up asap.

The Shinigami raised an eyebrow at her new ward, "All ready and set?"

He looked her directly in the eyes and gave a firm nod, she nodded back in approval. "Excellent, let's go."

* * *

The pair definitely gathered a lot of looks and likely produced a few more rumours given the state of their appearances. Purely by colouring and attractiveness, Renato could literally easily pass off as her own biological kid which was convenient in its own right. He was wearing black as well like she iconically always did.

She ignored the whispers and focused purely on getting them back to her favourite desk lady. She shoved the door open and nudged the kid inside before letting the door fall back into a closed position. The kid sighed in relief, finally free from all the looks and whispers that he wasn't used to getting.

Lilith shoved the completed request return file into his arms and leaned over his shoulder to match his own eye level. She pointed towards the desk on the far right that was closest to the request board. "Go give this to the desk lady over there."

Renato shot her a dubious look to which she returned with a casual smile and a gentle nudge to his back. "Go on, now," She prodded, "Treat it as your first step in training. As _my brat,_ you're gonna needa be super good in order to keep up."

She stood up straight and hopped over to the news display that was placed near the entrance. Renato just stared at her as she left before staring at the file in his hands, feeling entirely hesitant with the whole situation.

Feeling his eyes on her form she sent him a thumbs up over her shoulder and a teasing smirk, "Don't get left behind~" She sang.

What she had hoped to have encouraged him, did, in fact, encourage him to do the task but his reaction to her words wasn't what she had intended. When he started to rapidly pale in his shoes and darted to the counter, she felt kind of bad. He probably took it as a threat, that she would've left him behind.

When Renato reached the front desk, he stood on his tiptoes to slide the file onto the counter. The desk lady on the other side stood up slightly to see who had come to see her and raised an eyebrow at the sight of the child. She looked around for any signs of a guardian in the general vicinity, only to spot a familiar Reaper making eccentric cheering gestures in the distance, completely unknown to the nervous kid.

Desk lady sighed and dropped herself back into her seat, taking the file into her hands as she did so. After quickly processing the file, she stood up once more so to see her customer and speak to him directly and politely. Her blank looking eyes and monotone only made Renato more nervous.

"Would you like a bank transfer or cash?"

Unfortunately for Renato, Lilith had decided to blend herself into wallpaper behind the news board. When the question processed slowly in his head, his eyes darted around the room to try and find her to ask only to find that she was nowhere to be seen. He turned back to connect his eyes with the intimidating and waiting blank grey eyes, his shoulders trembled slightly.

"U-uhh…"

She raised an expectant eyebrow, whilst remaining silent and patient. Desk lady noticed slight movement from the corner of her eye and paused for a moment before giving the supposedly terrifying hitwoman a brief glance of exasperation breaking through her regular façade.

Good ol' Lilith was _still _cheering silently with giant and obvious gestures but somehow always managed to slip away undetected when the poor kid tried to look for her. The Reaper was miming a giant 'C' with her whole body creating a stupid looking arch to her right.

Desk lady sweat dropped before turning back to the poor boy. Now she just pitied the poor kid.

"I'll give you cash." She informed him shortly before walking away to collect the payment bag. Renato nodded rapidly in agreement with her suggestion and averted his gaze to stare at his feet as he waited.

She returned quickly after and placed the heavy bag of notes and coins, over the counter and into his hands. He stumbled slightly under the weight.

"Thank you for your business, have a good day."

The boy murmured a quick thanks before turning around and bolting over to the exit. He was greeted with an elated and visibly beaming in pride Lilith.

He felt an unfamiliar surge of happiness when he saw her grinning at him and patting him on the head for his accomplishment.

"You did it, kiddo!" She ruffled his spiky hair into even more of a mess than it already was, "You completed your first ever task and I'm so proud of you!"

Renato stared at her in awe for a moment, before a genuine smile broke across his face.

"Yeah, I did!"

* * *

As a reward for his first little mission, Lilith gifted him with a (hefty) completion pay-out in a cute little drawstring sack that she managed to string out of Desk lady.

The little skip in his step and the small overjoyed smiles that would occasionally arise when he thought she wasn't looking, made it completely worth it. It was actually so adorable.

"What scary mansion are we going to?" Renato asked her with a slight tilt of his head as he jogged up to walk next to her.

Lilith slowed her pace so he could easily maintain an even and comfortable walking speed alongside her. She gave him a brief look of acknowledgement before averting her eyes in preference of observing their surroundings. They could never be too careful even within neutral territory.

"The Vongola mansion," she informed him.

Renato froze mid-step and gaped at her, "Like the Vongola Vongola, like the strongest mafia famiglia Vongola?"

Lilith halted and gestured for him to keep walking, he obeyed immediately. She held a fist in front of her mouth and cleared her throat, "Yes, like the Vongola you've probably heard of."

The pair quickly approached the end of the street where they stopped for a moment, Renato opened his mouth to ask another question like the good 7-year-old he was but closed it swiftly as she continued to talk.

"Before you ask, we're going there to get your myriad of injuries checked up and healed. I'm no healer nor do I know a trustworthy doctor so I'm just going to get whoever Daniela lets fix her brat up, fix you up."

He craned his head up to look at her, "Daniela, as in Vongola Ottavo Daniela?"

"Yeah, that one" she replied without sparing him a glance in favour of looking around.

"Exactly how do we plan to get to Italy, though?"

"…do you know how to shadow step?"

Renato sent her an incredulous look and scrunched his nose up, "…do I know how to what now?"

Lilith chose that moment to sink into her shadow and pop out of his own, he was startled by her sudden appearance behind him before gaping at her in awe.

"Can you teach me that?" She shrugged, "I dunno, we can try though. Not everyone has the affinity for all abilities, but we'll eventually find something or some things for you."

He perked up at this.

"For now, though, we'll just take the cruise. Since the Mafia is Italian, getting to Italy shouldn't take more than an hour or so."

* * *

Renato gaped at the size of the Vongola mansion, it was way bigger than his old one and overall much more impressive. He had only ever dreamed of visiting the place and now it was coming true.

He toddled along closely behind her like a baby duckling as she sauntered up to the front door, right past the guards who graciously held the giant offending slabs of wood open for her. They had probably recognised her from when she visited that one time like ages ago, or maybe, just maybe, Daniela or Dante or someone told them to let her in if she came by. That would've been nice.

She stopped suddenly in the middle of the foyer and Renato ran straight into her back. "Oof!" he groaned quietly before stumbling back a step or two and apologising.

Lilith just waved him off, "Cover your ears, Ren." She advised shortly before reeling back and taking a big breath in.

He stared at her for a moment cluelessly but quickly snapped back to reality and shoved his hands over his ears just in time to protect himself from the booming voice of the woman in front of him.

**"DANIELA DI VONGOLA, GET YOUR ASS HERE NOW"**

Barely a few seconds later, a familiar green-haired woman with a great grin spread from cheek to cheek popped her head over the safety barriers that surrounded the area above the giant staircases. Daniela sprinted down the stairs much to her storm's dismay and tackled the Shinigami with a big hug. She pulled back after a moment, but her hands stayed firmly placed on her upper arms.

"You're back, you're actually back! I thought you'd never come back and that you hated me and that you would never be my friend because I was so mean and I'm so sorry, Lilith! Please forgive me and love me and be my friend."

Lilith furrowed her brows, "Wait, why are you apologizing?"

She bounced on her feet in frustration. "Because I was so mean! I'll do any-"

Another familiar face appeared with his silver hair tied back in a loose ponytail and his body clad in a casual Henley shirt and pants. Dante proceeded to flick Daniela's ear to shut her up before she said something they would all regret for her. The Vongola boss clutched at her aching ear, sending her supposed cloud _guardian_ a glare.

"No, she will not do anything but if you need something you are free to ask."

Lilith huffed a pout, "I almost got full reign over everything, you're so cruel, Asshole."

Dante raised an eyebrow at the off vulgar nickname but dismissed it. There was no harm in her tone after all. "And what did you need, Lilith?"

The woman reached a hand behind her and gently tugged a mini gender-bent version of herself, sans the eye colour, out from behind her back and into full view.

"Guys, this is my brat. Ren, these are the Vongola head peoples."

Renato mumbled out a quick greeting and Daniela beamed at the boy before frowning after seeing the state of him. Dante gave the kid a concerned look, "He looks beat, and by that I mean physically abused."

Lilith winced at the truth and stroked Renato's hair back fondly. He subconsciously leaned into her touch, "Yeah, he kinda was… I'm no good with healing and I never had the need to have a trustworthy doctor so I reckoned I would just ask whoever your resident doctor was to patch him up."

Dante gave Renato a contemplative look before turning back to the boy's guardian, "No, that's fine. We'll get William to fix him up."

The obviously sunny man with shaggy brown hair and circle glasses popped up to stare down at them from the second floor. He rolled his eyes playfully, "You called?" The silver head tilted his head to look at him.

"Yes, come down and fix Lilith's brat up."

"Bossy, bossy~"

The newcomer skipped down the stairs and strolled past the group and up to the kid. He crouched down to be more at level with him.

Moments later, after silent diagnosis, the man's hand burst into sparkly yellow flames. It was mesmerising for Renato to see and watch as the sun hovered the flames over the younger boy's skin and the injuries disappeared.

Lilith watched him closely with interest as well, "That must be useful."

William simply smiled at her and continued his work with the soft smile never fading.

"Yes, it is. I believe your little ward has the same type of flames as I as well, it might be useful for him to learn how to heal himself." Lilith blinked at him then to the boy who was still staring straight into the bright yellow flames with a strong look of pure curiosity and interest within his gleaming eyes.

"Hmm… maybe."

* * *

Daniela had graciously provided them with a room to stay for the night and hopefully longer. The original conversation had actually gone something along the lines of:

**_Dante, being the polite gentleman he was:_**_ "Would you like to stay for the night?"_

**_Daniela, being… well, Daniela:_**_ "WOULD YOU LIKE TO STAY FOREVER?"_

Yeah, hilarious.

Anyway, Lilith had chosen a room for herself that had a nice queen-sized bed in it with the intention of it being _her_ room but, of course, it ended up being both hers _and_ Renato's room after he freaked out in the middle of the night because he couldn't find her after a nightmare and thought she left him.

Now she had the kid curled up against her side. Not that she minded at all, he was her brat.

As the morning came around, Lilith had easily managed to wrangle some of Timoteo's clothes out of Daniela from Renato to borrow and now the pair were heading down to the dining area for some breakfast with the whole Vongola squad.

Lilith informed the kid that there would be at least two more kids present and that he should try and make friends with them if possible, he couldn't be stuck without friends his age and it would make the integration into any future schooling significantly easier and having them as future connections would be undoubtedly useful.

When Renato met Timoteo and Coyote, the trio easily hit off with each other, allowing the older members of the table to discuss other stuff in peace on the other end of the table.

Daniela leaned an elbow on the table and rested her chin on her palm, "So, where'd you find him?"

Lilith stuffed a fork full of pancake into her mouth, chewed and swallowed before she replied.

"In Mafia Land, I was about to do a bounty on his father when the kid came up to me with all his pocket money, asking for me to kill the same man. He was cute so I took him along with me."

Dante sweatdropped, "And what are you planning on doing with him now?"

The Shinigami hummed in contemplation before shrugging nonchalantly.

"Not sure," She turned to the other woman, "What does your brat do for the majority of his life at his age?"

The Vongola boss blinked at her and placed a finger on her chin, visibly thinking.

"School, I suppose? Maybe Renato can attend the same school as Timo and Coyote" The woman's gaze had turned hopeful.

Lilith hesitated and glanced at the kid briefly, "Maybe I'll do that, but if something goes wrong I'm pulling him straight the fuck out. Where do I get the sign-up sheets?"

Daniela helpfully informed her that she had some in her office that she could use to sign Renato up and sent one of her butlers to her said office to retrieve them.

The butler momentarily returned with the papers and a pen.

Lilith immediately started jotting down details and information, pausing on the first blank space.

_Surname._

Fun.

"Ren, what's your surname?" She called over to him. The boy turned to her with an unsure look, "I don't really want to take my old one…"

Well, that might be an issue. She turned her attention to Dante and stared him down until he acknowledged her with one of his iconic eyebrow raises.

"…what is it now?" he asked with exasperation clearly laced through his voice.

She smiled much too innocently for his own comfort, "What's your surname?"

He stared at her suspiciously. "…why do you ask?"

Lilith just batted her eyelashes at him and continued to smile, her eyes glittering in hope.

The man just sighed, he didn't know if he was going to regret this or not.

"Sinclair."

"Ren! Your new last name is Sinclair, okay?" The cloud was flabbergasted and stared at her in disbelief as the child nodded happily in agreement.

She gifted him with a pleasant closed-eye smile in return, he let out an aggravated sigh.

"Fine."

Lilith beamed at him with genuine appreciation that anyone could clearly see. A light shade of pink dusted over his cheeks as he averted his gaze to the side.

Daniela snickered, "Dude, you're so whipped."

He glared at her and covered his face with the back of his hand.

"Shut up."


	4. The Power of Family

**Thanks for all the reviews, favourites and follows! I'm glad to see there are some of you out there that are enjoying it. **

**If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to drop me a DM or a review about it and I'll happily consider it. Who knows when I'll need it when I run into some sort of writer's block.**

**Anyways, as always, please enjoy!**

* * *

Within the next few weeks, the newly dubbed Renato Sinclair had begun his school adventures. Despite her concerns at how he might fit in, Lilith resolved herself to stay out of it unless something actually happened, or he came to her himself.

It seemed completely fine so far so she didn't intervene.

For his first day at school, Daniela informed her that the principal had kindly accepted Renato's late application to join the school mid-year but had asked for an audience with his parents. "Parent's" might be a little difficult to provide but she would definitely pull something out of her ass to manage the image.

Naturally, she dragged along the "father" along whom didn't volunteer for the position at all but resigned to tagging along after physically being dragged out of his office. Dante had long gotten used to her eccentric ways of trying to make Renato's life decent and had not given a fuck for a long time.

He had also been persuaded to drive them to school. Daniela managed to smuggle both her own brat and his storm into the sleek-looking black car before they left for a free and convenient ride.

Lilith gave Renato a comforting pat on the head when they had to part ways, leaving Timoteo and Coyote to help ease himself into his new school life.

The receptionist lady helpfully escorted them to the headmaster's office. Dante held the door open like the gentleman he was and walked in shortly after the Shinigami.

The headmaster's eyes bulged at the sight of the pair as they walked in. It was obvious to them that he hadn't actually read the enrolment papers at all, let alone thoroughly because they both had their names written clearly on the front page as Renato's emergency contacts, Daniela being the required third.

Beads of nervous sweat were visible across his face, "H-hello, Sir Dante of the Vongola and Lady Reaper. How may I be of assistance to you both?"

Lilith was unimpressed with the first impressions of the school and sent the cloud, whom was standing beside her, a flat stare.

"…are you sure this was a good idea? Maybe I should've just home-schooled the kid."

Dante paused, he was equally as unimpressed with the headmaster and flipped his wrist to glance at his wristwatch before replying with an even tone.

"No, I'm half convinced this is a terrible idea but having Renato get comfortable around other kids might be for his own good. Having connections for the future is always useful."

"I guess so," She grumbled under her breath.

Lilith craned her head to look straight into the eyes of the headmaster. Her intentional intimidation tactics made him visibly tremble.

"We're here because you called us in for an audience regarding Renato's enrolment."

"A-ah, yes!" The middle-age man started, fumbling around his papers with shaky hands before settling on a certain file. "I just need you to sign some documents and his enrolment will be completed."

She shot him a suspicious look before storming up to the desk and swiping the file off the top. She flipped it open and glanced over the words before closing it and chucking it at Dante like a frisbee.

He expertly caught it and scanned it over before passing it back.

"It looks fine, sign it. If anything goes wrong just get Daniela to deal with it because it was her idea in the first place."

Lilith shrugged, "Okay, sure."

She scribbled her signature at the bottom of the page and placed it on the desk on turning on her heel to walk out.

"T-thank you for your time!" The headmaster called after them. Dante returned the gesture with a polite nod before closing the door behind him.

What a waste of time and effort.

* * *

Lilith was in quite the irritated mood when they returned to the mansion and decided to plonk herself on one of the couches in Dante's office to relax and read a book.

Her peace was interrupted several times by guests and/or staff wanting to speak with the Vongola Cloud guardian for whatever reason. Every single time she ignored it but this one was the final straw of her patience.

Her peace was once again interrupted by three clean knocks on the door, she grumbled a few unheard vulgar words under her breath. After a few moments of silence, it was clear that Dante hadn't found the will to respond or was dead tired or was distracted with his work.

"Yes, what is it?" she drawled out in reply in his stead, slowly pulling herself up into a sitting position.

"Ah, Lady Reaper! Good day to you, is Lord Dante in?" The voice asked cheerfully from the other side of the door.

Lilith craned her head to the cloud and raise an eyebrow in question. He propped his chin in his palm and shrugged before going back to work on his ever-growing pile of dreaded paperwork with a deep and tired sigh.

Well, he clearly didn't care right now.

"Yeah, he is. Why?"

"Oh, we just needed to talk to him." The person behind the door informed her, vaguely.

She let out an aggravated sigh, what is with these people? They're going to have the meeting with the resident cloud in front of her anyway, why not just say it straight?

"… and how many of you are there?"

"There's just the two of us, Lady Reaper."

She dropped her back, back down on the couch and reopened her book to the bookmarked page. She was so done, no more interruptions to her precious reading time.

"Then fucking talk to each other."

Dante, the ass, just blatantly snorted and ignored the spluttering that emerged from the pair on the other side of the door. Two pairs of footsteps finally faded into the peaceful silence that it was like before.

She let out a happy sigh of relief.

"Lilith." He called out for the woman's attention. She shifted her head to hang off the side of the couch and craned her neck to look at him from an awkward angle.

"What?"

"You can stay here for as long as you like, whenever you want, if you brush every person that comes along off like that."

She pulled her head back into its original comfortable position, "Okay, sure."

Dante was satisfied with less social interaction and Lilith was satisfied with a comfortable and less lonely relaxing space. Everything was simply satisfactory.

She got annoyed after the first three set of people and ended up putting up a door sign instead. It read:

**_'Do not disturb unless someone is dying or you're as cute a Renato. Much thanks. – Lilith'_**

No-one had the guts to come inside after that and try to prove that they were a cute as the kid because everyone knew that _no-one_ was nearly as cute as her brat in her opinion and _no-one _ever would be.

* * *

Several hours later, the children had safely been returned to the Vongola mansion via a lovely retired old chauffeur that had volunteered to do the job. He was a kind old man that used to serve as Daniela's own chauffeur when she attended her schooling as a teen, so she trusted him quite a bit.

Lilith was taking a nap when the news came around that the young masters had returned home. The residents had decided to leave her be and informed Renato of her current situation. The kid shrugged and sat in the Timoteo's study with him and Coyote to finish their assigned homework.

When she awoke, she rolled off the couch and landing gracefully in a standing position. Dante was no longer in his office, having finished his current stack of work and was nowhere to be seen. She glanced briefly at the clock in the room.

_5:00pm_

Renato should be home by now.

The Shinigami peeked her head into her own room, then Renato's room, then the study area, the kid was nowhere to be seen. She had barely missed him as the trio of kids had finished their homework about 10 minutes earlier and had moved on to other activities.

She furrowed her eyebrows, she never liked to needlessly abuse her soul locating abilities, so she was going to do this the manual way.

It was rather late but not yet dinner time, so where could he be? She assumed that he wouldn't be in the kitchen, given how close to dinner it was… perhaps Timoteo's room?

She popped her head into the Vongola heir's bedroom only to be disappointed with the flawlessly clean and empty-of-kids room.

By this time the resident maids, staff and guardians were giving her questioning looks as she wandered around the building, poking her head into random rooms.

She huffed in annoyance and ended up storming down to Daniela's office, where the sky always was, and shoving the door open.

Much to her surprise, there her brat was in all his adorable glory alongside the Vongola kids playing cards on Daniela's coffee table. Dante was also there, standing beside the Vongola Sky's desk discussing some sort of business.

All five pairs of eyes snapped to her form as she entered the room.

"Oh, there you are." She greeted Renato.

The brat was there eating a small pack of chips, much like the other two kids were doing as well.

She sighed and closed the door behind her before leaning back on it, she cocked her head to the side, "And how was your day at school?"

Through a mouthful of chips, he replied with some incoherent words.

Lilith frowned, "Chew and swallow before you talk." She scolded.

He quickly did so and tried again. "It was fine." She hummed in contemplation.

"And what are you doing now…?" He glanced at the cards in his hands and then to her, expecting her to connect the dots but she just kept staring at him flatly, waiting for a reply.

Renato huffed, "I'm playing cards and eating a family-sized bag of chips."

She eyed the tiny bag of chips in his lap, "Ren, that's a small bag. It's definitely not family-sized."

He stuffed another chip into his mouth, chewed and swallowed before placing a card down and picking another up from the deck.

"Every bag of chips is family-sized if you're an orphan."

The air in the room froze, everyone froze. Timoteo's hand that was in the middle of picking up a card just paused in time. They all gaped at him and Lilith looked absolutely mortified.

She puffed out a short breath before storming out of the room to who knows where. Renato's shoulders slumped in regret.

Maybe that wasn't the correct way to answer that.

He stared at the bag of chips in his lap before dropping his hand of cards on the table and standing up.

"I don't wanna play anymore…" he mumbled sadly before walking out of the room, but not before he crushed that bag of chips in his fist and dropped it in the trash.

* * *

Guilt was digging into Renato's conscience as they gathered in the dining room for dinner. Lilith was late and Renato felt terrible and blamed himself for her not joining them.

He had taken the seat opposite Dante in hopes of being able to sit next to her and apologise but was significantly disheartened when she never made an appearance.

The residents seated at the table didn't know what they could say to make the tense and depressing air of silence that surrounded the dinner table disperse at all.

But they didn't need to do anything as the thick silence crumbled like glass when the doors swung open loudly.

Lilith stormed right in and straight to Renato with a stack of papers in hand.

"I'm having a baby." She announced shortly as she made her way to the boy.

Everyone at the table blanched at her announcement and snapped their necks to stare at Dante who, in turn, simply sipped his tea, leaned back in his chair and sighed out a "No".

Renato just stared at her when she stopped right next to him, "Uh, okay that's gre—"

She slammed down the stack of papers on the table next to his plate, resonating vibrations throughout the long dining table and making several plates jump but not spill.

Renato's heart pounded against his ribs.

"It's you," she informed him sharply and slammed a pen on top of the papers, "sign here."

He spluttered for a moment with his eyes widening. Lilith tapped her foot impatiently, "Well?"

Renato fumbled slightly, his eyes welling up with tears, before scribbling his name onto the document through the blur. A satisfied smile spread broke across her face as she swiped the papers up and eyed the signature.

She grinned and skipped back out of the dining room. The newly adopted kid rubbed furiously at his eyes after she left.

He was still stunned in disbelief.

"Did that really just happen?" he asked in a hoarse whisper to no-one in particular.

The cloud gave him a small smile and a nod whilst Daniela positively beamed at the kid in happiness for him.

"It sure did!"

* * *

When the first weekend after his first week of school arrived, Lilith sat Renato down in the Vongola training grounds. Since he was now officially her kid, she was going to start his training. Even though she probably would've done it without the paperwork she sure knew how much it meant to the brat after seeing his tearful smile.

She planted her hands on her hips and looked down at her new kid.

"Ok, now we're going to try and teach you a cool trick or two."

A broad grin split across his face, "Okay!"

"First things first, I'll need you to remember some of my life mottos." She raised a finger to count them as she filtered through them all.

"My first rule is always 'Don't strike unless the clock is low.' but you can't see nor feel clocks anyway so you can ignore that one. Instead, my second rule will be your first unless you can think of something that makes more sense."

Dread started the fill the pit of his stomach when an evil grin started to form slowly on her face.

"No pain, no gain." She pulled out a bag of water balloons, "Now, start running, Ren!"

He paled a few shades and scrambled to his feet before bolting as far away from her as he could. A splat of water hit his shoulder making him flinch in surprise, but he never stopped running.

"Run in an inconsistent zigzag motion, never run in a straight line! It's way too easy to hit you that way." She advised him from behind and lugging another water balloon into his back.

He struggled to break and maintain an inconsistent running pattern, but he quickly got used to it after being hit by another couple of balloons. A quick learner, Lilith grinned.

"Good! Now run faster, Ren. You're too slow!"

Renato huffed and puffed, completely exhausted. "But, I'm tired!" He whined.

She popped up behind him and leaned to whisper in his ear, her hot breath against the freezing condition of his body did not make the contrast feel good.

_"Then, don't be~"_ She sang and reeled back for a slow and obvious throw.

His eyes widened and he dove and rolled off to the side of the building to dodge before disappearing behind the corner.

Lilith's eyes flashed and she broke out into a hearty laugh, "Good, good!"

Oh, this would be fun.

* * *

Renato was dead on his feet every weekend night when he came to dinner. At one point he was so tired that he was falling asleep at the table and Dante had to catch his head before it flopped into his dinner.

He sent the not-guilty Shinigami a look, "Maybe you should tone it down if he's this dead."

She looked up from her meal and shrugged. "No pain, no gain. He'll be fine, I went through it too."

Dante deadpanned and gently leaned the sleeping kid back in his chair.

"I truly pity him."

Lilith scoffed, "He'll thank me in the future."

* * *

She didn't lie, the results started showing after the first month of his training. Renato stopped coming to dinner half dead, still tired but his stamina was rapidly increasing, and_ he could feel it_.

His morning weekend runs were getting easier and easier to complete, it even got to the point where Lilith was extending them and making him finish them faster to get him to the next stage. He eagerly accepted the challenge and thrived off the successful feeling of getting stronger.

His P.E. grade was getting higher, he was climbing the confidence course ranks and carrying his heavy textbooks no longer felt like a challenge.

It did wonders on his self-esteem but not on his school life.

Despite both his active and academic grades going up, his social life seemed to be plummeting. Other kids were getting jealous of his progress and he didn't know exactly why he was in the wrong.

Timoteo let him stay with his group of friends but soon enough Renato started to drift.

The terrible comments he heard about him trying to use the Vongola heir as a means of money or how he didn't deserve to hang out with the Vongola heir because he wasn't a guardian and he was just intruding, just tore him apart inside.

He didn't want to hear it any more so he started to eat his lunch by himself on the rooftops, study by himself in his own room or in Dante's office instead of Daniela's where he used to go and he moved himself from his normal desk in the middle of the room to the far back corner.

He honestly didn't want to go to school any more but sucked it up because he knew that overall It was good for him.

The next morning, he went to Dante to ask him personally to drive him to school instead of going with the other kids. The cloud didn't question him and silently drove him to school before the others left the house.

Renato mumbled a goodbye to his father figure before dragging his feet through the school gates. Dante sat in the car for a few moments just watching the kid walk into school with a frown, he watched him cringe away from other children that were obviously attempting to assert dominance over the boy. This caused Renato to end up speeding walk his way straight into the main building with his eyes locked on the ground.

That wasn't a good sign at all.

When Dante returned to the mansion after a few moments of waiting and went to deliver an update to Lilith. Not finding her in her own bedroom he assumed she must've been in his office and he was correct.

"Renato's being bullied." He informed her shortly, closing the doors behind him.

The Shinigami sat up and looked down with a frown, her hair shadowing over her eyes, "That's not good…"

Dante walked over to his desk and leaned back in his expensive leather chair, "Are you planning on doing anything about it?"

She breathed out a deep sigh.

"I don't want to be babying him." She told the cloud, "If he wants to survive in the Mafia, he needs to be able to survive school at least or ask for aid."

Dante stood silently, just listening and lending an ear.

Her jaw clenched, "I'll let him deal with himself until he asks for aid. He needs to know when to ask for help too." She looked him straight in the eye, "If he asks _you_, though, would you help him?"

"I would, but as you said, he just needs to ask."

Lilith's eyes fell to her lap once more, "…thank you."

A touch of a smile graced his face.

"You needn't thank me, after all, he took my name. He's basically my son too."

That smile soon spread throughout his features when Lilith burst into gentle and appreciative laughter.

"Yeah, I suppose that's true too."

* * *

School every day was getting worse and worse.

Renato had completely stopped trying to make friends with and associate with the Vongola heir that he was supposedly friends with and preferred to be by himself.

Now, he knew that the original reason why Lilith was paying for his schooling was because she wanted him to have future connections and friends his age, so he couldn't help but feel extremely guilty about not being able to fulfil her wishes.

Isolation soon turned to bullying but only from one specific group of older kids with the rest of the school remaining bystanders. This school was the best and most well-known mafia school in the whole of Italy, hence why Timoteo was sent here and it wasn't an uncommon sight to see other heirs of smaller and weaker familglia try and cosy up to the boy.

The bully, as Renato had found out, was another heir of a mafia famiglia that was looking to pull the Vongola into an alliance. No-one in the school, sans Timoteo, Coyote and likely the other guardians, knew that Renato had a presence within the Vongola household, so they probably saw him as easy picking that was trying to drag himself up the mafia hierarchy.

Renato refused to become someone's punching bag but at the same time refused to trigger a fight within the school and make issues for his caretakers.

When the bullies approached him, he chose to evade. He wasn't the top of the class in athletics for nothing. They couldn't touch him, and this only made them more and more angry.

Internally, he was wondering when they would start pulling the 'My dad's a Mafia boss' card on him and it seemed like he jinxed himself when he found himself cornered in the bathroom.

The older kid had the entrance and exit completely blocked off by his own lackeys.

Renato breathed in and out deeply to calm himself, "What do you want?"

The other boy crossed his arms over his chest and stared him down with a glare. "I can't let a younger and unknown name kid take over the overall ranking boards. It's humiliating for me as a the famiglia heir of the Carcassa famiglia!"

Renato cocked his head to the side and stared flatly at him. His life suddenly turned into a white girl American chick flick.

"And this concerns me, how?"

The bully's face flushed red in rage, "Sabotage your scores or I'll-"

A burst of high-pressure killer intent flooded the room. Renato's eyes darkened under the blank stare that he wore on his face.

"And you'll what? Kill me? Destroy me? Any other human being could do that. So could a dog, even a really dedicated _duck._ Oh wait, that duck could do better than you. Sorry, my bad, bad example."

The boy hissed through his teeth, "I'll destroy you and your unknown family if you even have one. My famiglia can easily overrun yours. Can you imagine it? Your mother laying on the ground, bleeding out because you refused to sacrifice your grades for her."

Renato glared him down, amplifying the pressure of his released flames and sending the other boy to his knees.

"You can't touch my mother." He growled darkly and walked up to the bully. His eyes glinted in a silent threat and he ran his nail against the thick veins of his throat.

"Touch her and I'll fucking kill you myself."

The head bully, who Renato now knew was known as Matteo Carcassa, had gone and complained directly to the head master about the situation that had occurred after running away with his tail between his legs. He explained that Renato had attacked him in the bathroom, flaunting his rank and was threatening his life.

A complete lie.

Much to the headmaster's own dismay, he had to act on the incident and held both boys in his office while they waited to their respective parents to arrive. The students in the room were forced to sit and listen to the one-sided phone call that connected their principal to their parents.

Matteo's call had gone directly to his father and was smooth and short. Renato's went initially to Daniela then referred to Dante who chose to receive the message.

Renato was furious with himself and completely ashamed. He had done what he had consciously trying not to do and that was cause more issues for Lilith. Now he could only sit and wait to deal with the consequences but with how the situation was going he would likely be put in the wrong and placed in severe discipline.

Matteo's father was the first of the parents to arrive. He was a very visibly buff man with a bald head and a default grouchy look. There were sidearms laid out attached to his belt in plain sight, likely an attempt at intimidation.

Matteo grinned at Renato with a smug glint in his eye, "Where's your mommy, Renny-boy? Too scared to come face a real mafia boss?"

Renato chose to exercise his right of silence triggering a flush of rage through the other boy's system. Matteo's father was equally as outraged at the mini-shinigami's blatant refusal to converse with his heir and only son.

The headmaster flailed in a panic as the Carcassa famiglia boss stormed up to the boy and dangled him by the collar. Once again, Renato chose to remain silent and received the flow of insults and threats with immense grace and minimal eye contact.

"You little brat! Obey, my son or I will destroy your-" blablablabla. Renato drowned the rest of it out, Idiot-Matteo's father was equally as idiotic as his son.

Empty threats, he reasoned with himself that they were all empty threats. Lilith and Dante were super strong and could take care of themselves.

But a little bit of him felt flooded in worry. What if they were caught off guard or sleeping or sick and they get hurt? What if it was all his fault?

He let out a strained and light breath due to the restriction that was being placed on his airways. His eyes widened in realisation and dilated in panic. If he didn't do something soon, he was going to die.

Renato kicked at the significantly bigger man over and over to try and make him loosen his stubborn grip but it wasn't working. The wooden doors that led into the headmaster's office creaked open as he reeled back and slugged the mafia boss in the face, finally freeing his aching airways.

Renato fell to his knees and clutched his chest, panting hard. Matteo's father was recovered from the momentary stunning of Renato's punch and was clearly ready to launch himself at the child so Renato instinctively braced his head for the impact that never came.

The Carcassa mafia boss had frozen in place, his eyes locked on the doors behind the kid he had just physically and verbally assaulted.

Renato forced his heavy eyelids open to see what was going on and saw not Lilith, but Dante standing in the doorway absolutely seething. Dante had always been a calm and rational part of his life that it was somewhat terrifying for Renato to witness his fury even if it wasn't directed at him.

His well known to be extremely powerful flames flooded the room with releases of high levels of heavy pressure upon everyone but his little sun.

The Vongola Cloud _hissed_ at Matteo's father, who flinched at the sight. The Carcassa boss grew pale and began to tremble, a rictus grin appearing moments after.

"A-ah, Signore Dante of the Vongola, how pleasant it is to see you here. What brings you here today…?" he attempted, pathetically.

Dante growled darkly, **"What did you do to my son?" **

The other man stumbled back and away from the cloud's ward and Renato stared at him in wonder. How he was addressed made him have mixed feelings, did Dante say that for the appearance? or did he— no. Renato shook any hopes off his mind, he didn't want to get hopeful.

"Y-your son?"

Dante let out an aggravated sigh, completely ignoring the other man. He was useless and very much below him, associating with him would bring in no benifits. The cloud lightened up the killer intent that flooded the room.

He kneeled before Renato and gave him a quick once over, raising his joints one by one to check for injuries. Outside of the glaring bruise that was soon forming on the little sun's neck, he seemed fine.

A displeased frown spread across his expression as he stood up. "What happened at school today, Renato?"

Matteo scowled a warning 'discretely' at the other student, but it did not go unnoticed by the Vongola's resident cloud whom, in turn, presented the boy with a warning glare of his own. He mimicked his father's flinch for earlier.

Renato dropped his eyes to his hands that were limp in his lap, a habit that he had adopted from Lilith when she felt ashamed or embarrassed, she would always look away.

"He threatened Lilith, so I sort of threatened to kill him if he hurt her…"

A sympathetic yet amused smile bloomed on Dante's face. How, cute. He just wanted to protect his mother from a potential threat, there wasn't anything wrong with that. How he dealt with the following situation was what was wrong.

"Your mother is powerful, Renato. You know who she is, her reputation and how strong she is."

The boy mumbled his reply, "Yeah, but still. Now, I screwed up and made more issues for you and her because of my stupidity."

Dante gestured for him to stand up and Renato stumbled obediently into a stand.

"Defending family from potential threats was not wrong of you. What went wrong was how you went about to do it. The Carcassa heir and boss were threatening your loved ones and you let them step all over you, next time, don't do that."

He nodded in understanding, unaware of the rapidly paling faces of the father-son duo from behind him. Dante eyed them up and down with an unimpressed look.

"If they do it again, let loose and punish them. This is a mafia school after all. If they threaten you first you can place blame on self-defence, just make sure you have evidence or witnesses."

He looked up at the man with a mischievous grin, "Yes, sir!"

"Also, remember that it's not always possible to do everything by yourself so don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it."

All thoughts of Dante only acting like he did, just for show just vanished in his words.

"Okay, I'll remember it."

Well now, he had permission to assert dominance to the population and now nothing was going to stop him from putting the whole school under his thumb. They had made his school life miserable for the past couple of days, so he was going to fix it.

"Oh, and Filippo Carcassa? Consider your application for a position in the alliance declined. We do not accept those who threaten our family."

He was still going to fanboy a bit though. Holy shit, Dante—his _Dad_ was so cool.

* * *

**...if I have more than one chapter ready, should I like, wait to post it so there's approximately even spacing between chapters or just fuck it all and throw it out? **

**My initial thought would be to do the latter but I just wanted to see if anyone had a preference.**


	5. Stronger

**_To blades:_ Ohoho~ you're catching onto some details indeed! Yes, that'll an important thing to note in the future and will definitely impact future relations and events, perhaps even cause some juicy drama.**

**_To Micha247 and SkullMuffinGirl:_ Aww, thank you so much! I'm glad you like it.**

**_To Savage Kill:_ Thanks for replying to my enquiry ^^ and yeah I probably will!**

* * *

True to his internal word, Renato moved to assert his dominance over anyone who tried to bully or disturb him. The first steps of his movement went smoothly because all the bullies never bothered him after Matteo told them all what had happened.

Renato didn't even do anything and half the school was terrified and/or very respectful of his presence. This was due to his grades and now newly announced lineage.

It was honestly a little disappointing for him, he really wanted to get the bullies back but had no intention of being the one to start the fight.

Now, Lilith, when she heard the news of Renato's school events, was furious with the Carcassa and was this close to storming straight into their base and murdering half of them. If she wasn't restricted due to her position as a Shinigami and by Dante's logical reasoning, she probably would have.

Contrary to popular belief, Shinigami _did_ have rules placed on them _and_ they could die. Just not through old age in the human realm. Generally, Shinigami can physically age by remaining in the Shinigami Realm for however much older you wanted to be, but their ageing would take a flat pause if they left it.

Cutting life clocks short was acceptable but extending clocks was not. A Shinigami can only indirectly help a person extend their life clocks and would die if they killed to extend a clock.

There was a famous story that was told to all students of the Shinigami Academy. It was about the one Shinigami who tried to save a human's clock by influencing their decisions but only ended up causing their clock to drain faster and faster. Out of pure guilt and despair of her failures, the Shinigami ended up killing the assassin that came after the human and thus killed herself in the process.

They never did mention the **name** of that shinigami but they said that they were decently well-known so they didn't want to destroy their memory.

The story served as a warning to the students about the dangers of playing with extending time for humans and that leaving them to their own fate was usually the best for everyone.

Naturally, not everyone agreed with this sentiment, but it was honestly, each to their own. If they wanted to toy with trying to save humans, it was their own right and their own risk.

Lilith was extremely grateful for Dante being there for Renato. He had dealt with the situation significantly better than she ever would have and even bumped up Renato's self-confidence and taught him valuable lessons.

The first signs that she saw of this was when Renato blatantly asked Dante to teach him how to shoot during dinner. Before the school incident, she was positive that Ren would never have considered asking for help at all.

Lilith wasn't even insulted that he didn't ask her. In fact, she was rather relieved that he didn't because her marksmanship was next to trash.

If the awkward eye roll and aversion of her gaze to the side, paired with the half-assed sigh of relief that sprouted from her didn't speak words for her preference for the situation, then nothing would.

The downside to this arrangement was that Dante had a fuck ton of paperwork to do and often didn't have a consistent enough schedule to train Ren for a decent amount of time. He eyed her expectantly, just waiting for her to volunteer herself like the good mother she was.

With visible reluctance, she grumbled it out under her breath. "…I'll do your paperwork."

His satisfied smirk only grew once she actually verbalised it, "Ho~ is that so? How kind of you, Lilith."

Her eyes held scepticism; he wouldn't dump _all_ his paperwork on her …right? I mean she wouldn't mind helping but still.

"But _only_ if you're training him or like… dying, okay?" she confirmed uncertainly.

"But, of course, my dear fellow parent." He replied, a little too happy for her liking.

She grimaced at the sight of the sunny acting cloud.

"Yeah… sure."

* * *

It didn't take long for Renato to get accustomed to using guns at all. It definitely helped that Dante was an expert in marksmanship, but he mostly preferred to use anti-tank rifles or snipers if necessary. That didn't mean he wasn't good at using side arms.

Renato had shown to prefer singular side arms but showed a talent for snipers, so Dante taught him both.

It was apparent to anyone in the household that Dante was no less spartan than Renato's other parent, in fact, apparently, hardly anyone within the Vongola household was not spartan.

After his training with Dante, Renato was then passed over to William for sun flame training and he was worked to the bone there too. If he thought that training with Lilith _only_ was bad, this was like 200 times worse.

He had a whole schedule that his self-assigned tutors collated together for him. Dante worked him to the bone every second day, after class. After any session of training, Renato was sent to William to practice his sun flame usage by healing himself and doing basic exercises. Sunday was his rest day though. No-one was allowed to let him train during that time otherwise he would end up destroying his own body, thus Sunday was when they destroyed his mind.

The 8th generation Vongola mist just had to be a highly intelligent being and after Renato asked Dante how he could go about getting ahead of his grade, he flung the boy into the cage that was the mist. The said mist was a Japanese man named, Kisuke. He was an expert sadist that was goofy as fuck and often collaborated with the resident sun to tease the boy to oblivion using flames.

His signature laugh was the good ol' "Ohohohohoho~" and he was volunteered to take the position of beating everything Renato asked to learn academically, into his brain.

"Oh, Baby sun~!" The mist called fabulously whilst skipping into the room.

Renato huffed and half glared at him, "What now, Kisuke?"

A cheeky grin spread from cheek to cheek as he spun a very familiar ball of mist flames on the tip of his finger, "Quick math~! Identify the last digit of the value 103424^1024"

The boy sputtered and his brain immediately turned to calculator mode, "A-ah..."

The mist clicked his tongue to mimic the countdown of a clock. "Time is passing~ 3, 2-"

"SIX, IT'S SIX!" Renato yelled out in panic.

Kisuke sent him a proud grin, "Nice, nice! Now explain why."

"Because the number can just be expressed at 4^1024 then you calculate the first four powers of 4 to find the pattern and find which power is a factor to the original power that the last digit of that power is the last digit. Since 4^4 = 16 and 1024 is a multiple of 4 then the last digit is 6."

Lilith leaned on the doorframe and sent the pair a contemplative smirk, "Ho~ maybe I should just skip the mafia academy and just send you to college. If you major in maths, I reckon you could do it."

The mist nodded in agreement, "Hm... hm! Indeed you could, baby sun. By the way, I'm still going to throw this sadistic ball of illusions at your face so please don't brace yourself."

"Wha-" _pshhum!_

Ah, there he goes again.

Unknown to Renato, their teasing wasn't just for fun. Yes, it was fun but it built a subconscious ability for the boy to know how to recognise and use his own flames to combat mist illusions and to increase his control as a whole.

Unfortunately, fortunate for him, just because he now also had other teachers, didn't mean that he got a free pass out of training with his mother. On the downside, he barely was able to scolf down his dinner before passing out, but on the bright side he was getting stronger and he was determined to do so.

During the beginning of this training period, Lilith paid a well-needed visit to Daniela with concerns about the mafia academy. It was a great relief to the Shinigami to see that Daniela, did, in fact, know when she needed to treat a situation seriously, she supposed it was only right as she was raised as the rightful heir to the strongest mafia famiglia in the whole of Italy.

Daniela had the doors locked so they would not be interrupted.

The Vongola sky was clearly distraught after hearing how much bullying Renato had been going through and was rather disappointed in her own child and his guardians for not stepping in at all, despite Renato being their friend, well, used to be their friend. She wasn't so sure that the little sun would want to anymore and she would fully sympathise with his decisions.

Timoteo and Coyote were summoned moments later. Daniela had a disappointed frown placated on her face and along with the presence of Lilith, the Vongola heir lowered his head in shame when he immediately realised what was going on.

His mother gestured for him and his storm to sit in the seat on the opposite side of her desk, Lilith being positioned to Daniela's direct left.

The Vongola boss released a very out-of-character sigh, "I'm sure you know why you have been called here, Timo, Coyote."

They both gave stiff nods.

"I just want to know, why… why you didn't do anything to help Renato. Especially when he considered you both, his close and only friends. Especially when you both knew that he was a new student in a new area that was being bullied **because of your reputation with the famiglia.**"

Timoteo flinched in shame and swallowed hard, "I… I thought that— I know I was being cowardly… and I'll never do it again, but I just thought that I would've made it worse by standing up for him. That I might've made a bad impression on other famiglia for the Vongola and that—"

"—and that they might end up turning on you?" Lilith finished, quietly.

His chin trembled, he hated disappointing people, especially his own mother. He hated bothering her for anything.

"Y-yes…"

The Shinigami shook her head with a pronounced frown spread across her face, she refused to look at the sky child. Daniela pressed her lips into a line, "Answer me this, Timo."

His eyes immediately shot up to meet hers in polite courtesy.

"Are you going to lead the Vongola as a mafia boss or are you going to pursue the goal of our precious founder, Primo? Will you keep this famiglia in the mafia, or will you help change us back into the vigilante group we once were?"

The heir's eyes widened and trembled as realisation flooded his veins. He was doing his best to stay on the best side of the other mafia heirs for future connections and he had been selfishly prioritising his own safety as the only heir open for the Vongola. He had been preparing himself to be a mafia boss.

But that's not what he should have been doing, and he knew it. He wanted to save and not kill… he understood what he did wrong.

Lilith read everything off his myriad of expressions and pushed off the wall.

"I'm done here." She informed her sky boss friend. Daniela gave her a genuine smile laced together with an apologetic one.

"Alright, I'll finish up here."

* * *

That same night, Timoteo asked Renato if they could talk in private and sincerely apologised to the other boy. Renato didn't forgive him immediately, he didn't feel like the sky, nor any of his guardians deserved it, but he graciously accepted his apology. He said that he was willing to let them redeem themselves and would be happy to work with them in the future but didn't think he would be able to forgive them so easily.

Despite his words, as the school days flew into weeks, Renato started coming home with him once more and was noticeably happier at school.

His relationship with Timoteo, though, had changed dramatically much to Coyote's displeasure. Renato had rapidly been getting more and more skilled both academically and physically to the point that he used it as a point to tease the sky after Daniela asked him to tutor her heir.

This motivated Timoteo to study and train even harder in hopes of trying to beat him at something but unfortunately for him that didn't happen. The results of his increased efforts were apparent but his private tutors and trainers along with his own work ethic didn't seem to reach the point of beating Renato's.

He never felt hate towards Renato for that fact though. He supposed he might've if he didn't live under the same roof as him and had seen how hard he worked himself to death for those same results. If anything, Timoteo just felt more respect for him, after all, he was a really good motivator for improvement even if he was basically, for the lack of better words, a gigantic sadistic ass.

Not that he would say that to Lilith because she was honestly terrifying when it came to her sweet baby angel Renato.

As Renato's birthday approached, Daniela decided to plan a big party for the soon to be 10-year-old, more accurately, she was going to hold a full-on ball.

Something about announcing something. No-one was completely sure.

For his birthday, when he woke up Renato's adoptive father presented him with a CZ75 1ST that had his name engraved in gold. Dante had deemed him fit for combat should he be required to do so. Lilith had given him a super-powered Fedora as his present and they made sure to both give him his presents well before the party started. He vowed to treasure them both for the rest of his days, it felt like the best day of his life.

"Ren~ Timoteo's here to drag you off to prepare for the party. Don't leave him waiting now!" Lilith called into the bathroom from her position relaxing in bed.

Another pair of footsteps gradually approached their room, the footsteps were familiar, if that was even possible, so Lilith paid no mention to the form as they entered the room without knocking and buried herself further into the blankets.

A shadow loomed over her face, blocking the comforting warmth of the natural sunlight. She strained an eye open for a briefly before squeezing them shut and rolling over, "What do you want, Dante?" she groaned.

Timoteo awkwardly stood behind the Vongola cloud looking anywhere but directly at her. She sent him a confused look as she sat up, the blanket falling into her lap. Dante sent her an unamused look, "You're making the poor prepubescent kid uncomfortable, Lilith."

She glanced down tiredly and realised she was still in her spaghetti strap nightdress.

"Oh," she said smartly, pulling the duvet further up. "Sorry, sky-brat."

Timoteo sweat dropped nervously and waved her off lightly, "It's fine."

Renato chose that moment to hop out of the shower only in a towel, the Vongola heir spluttered and Dante sighed. "Renato, go put some clothes on."

"Ehh…" he whined, "But I don't usually have to as long as I don't leave the room."

The cloud gave him a stern look, "You have guests, Renato."

The boy rolled his eyes and sauntered over to the closet to pull out something comfortable to wear.

"It's just you and Timo anyway. I'm pretty sure we've all seen each other naked at some point."

Dante half-heartedly glared at Lilith with accusation evident in his eyes, she just shrugged. "He's turned out pretty good so far." He flicked her ear before turning on his heel and walking out the door.

Lilith clutched her poor and abused organ huffing a glare at the man.

"You're my date to the party tonight, by the way." He stated, flatly and walked out the door before she got to reply.

She rolled her eyes, "Right, sure."

The younger two watched the scene in bewilderment, Renato looked from Lilith to the door Dante had just left through back to Lilith then to Timoteo.

"I think I need to take notes from him."

Timoteo blanched, "You do not! You can just ask them out, you know. It's way more polite in every way, shape _and _form!"

"Yeah, I can but this seems way more effective."

* * *

This wasn't just your small 'family and friends' ball, it never was with the Vongola. Every single possible allied famiglia and potential ally was invited to wish the child of the Vongola cloud 'Happy Birthday'.

Renato didn't know if this would be remotely enjoyable with how much he knew he would need to plaster on a fake and polite smile and wave. Seeing as how Timoteo had his whole squad of guardians with him, Renato had no wish to tag along with him for the night, it would be so awkward and uncomfortable he would've wanted to go back to the room and sleep the time off.

He found sanctuary in Dante when he finally arrived…. Without Lilith.

He squinted at the man, "Where's Lilith? I thought she was your date?"

"She is, something about getting something from the other realm before coming."

"Ohh, okay."

Dante graced Renato with a small and rarely gentle smile. "Happy birthday, kiddo."

Renato grinned at him, "Thanks, Dad."

The cloud rolled his eyes and ruffled the boy's hair.

"Have you eaten anything yet?"

"No… I was going to grab something with Timoteo but then his guardians came along and it got awkward."

His father frowned, "Let's go get something to eat then, shall we? There are allies everywhere so expect greetings."

Renato grimaced. "Is it bad that I sort of just wanted a little party?"

Dante continued to walk towards the banquet with the little sun trailing along closely behind.

"No, it's not bad at all. I suppose Daniela had a reason for this other than to show you off to other famiglia."

He slipped two plates and passed one to the younger boy, Renato thanked him and moved to scoop some potatoes out of the tray.

"But why would she need to show me off?"

Dante ushered him along slightly faster so to avoid a suspicious individual that had been watching them for a while.

"First and foremostly, she did it for your protection. No-one will even think of sending assassins for you or your mother after they are informed of your connections to me. Not that they would ever think of targeting her in the first place."

"And secondly?"

He led him towards the side of the ballroom and towards one of the window seats. The cloud's eyes darted around the room cautiously before sitting down and sighing tiredly.

"To keep them away from trying to force flame harmonisation on you. Since I am a well-known cloud and Lilith is a powerful assassin, their initial thoughts would be for you to be very powerful just through genetics."

"But, I'm not—"

"They don't know any better, Renato. Information is powerful, do not share more than necessary."

The little sun nodded grimly before digging into his food.

The loud chaotic noises of the ballroom suddenly went silent triggering the pair to curiously look for the cause. Renato quickly swallowed his current mouthful and left his plate on the window sill in favour of standing up and getting closer. Dante silently followed suit.

Ah— that's why…

Lilith casually made her way down the large extravagant stairs, her hand gliding across the railings. She was dressed in a long, sleek black bodycon dress that had a nice generous slit down the leg, her hair was placed up in a braided updo.

Her eyes brightened noticeably when she spotted the pair and quickly made her way over to them, ignoring all the eyes she had on her. Renato sweatdropped at her as she pulled his face gently into her chest for a hug.

"Happy birthday, Ren!" she greeted with a smile.

"Thanks, Mom." His voice muffled by her dress.

She let him go and grinned at him. He returned the grin with an exactly matching grin of his own. Dante walked into the light and greeted the Shinigami with a nod of acknowledgement.

"You look oddly well-dressed tonight."

She rolled her eyes in good nature, "I always look good, thank you very much."

There were several pairs of hungry eyes that were eyeing her body even as she stood with what they should've believed was her husband and child. Renato frowned, "Stop trying to impress people." He demanded, "I'm going to get jealous."

Lilith snickered, "Oh, don't worry." She said with a dismissive wave.

Dante gifted her with an unbelieving look. She huffed, "You both are so possessive, I swear."

Daniela wandered up to the trio wearing one of her signature pantsuits. A smile spread on her face as she greeted the birthday boy, "Happy birthday, Renato!"

The Vongola boss eyed the Shinigami up and down with a smirk, "Ohoho~ Who're you trying to impress tonight hmm~? Dante? You don't have to dress up at all to do that."

She cocked her head towards the other woman and wiggled a finger in front of her face.

"I don't dress to impress, Daniela. I dress to_ depress_." She corrected, matter-of-factly.

She received a simultaneous rise of eyebrows from all three of them. Daniela and Renato looked so baffled it was comical.

She did a little twirl and sent them a wink with a playful look, "I aspire to look so good that I make people hate themselves." she declared dramatically, with a hand laying gently on her chest.

Silence followed her explanation, the noise from the crowd suddenly seemed significantly louder than before given the contrast to the lack of volume from their own conversation.

The corner of Dante's mouth was twitching upwards to the point where it was painfully obvious how hard he was trying to not chortle at her reasoning. He coughed lightly, concealing the brief chuckle-snort that escaped him.

"Right, great, okay."

Renato full out started laughing at Dante's predicament causing the cloud to roll his eyes fondly at the birthday kid. If he was going to suffer the slightest bit of humiliation, it felt better that it was at least used for the kid's entertainment.

He deserved it, one's 10th birthday only comes around once, after all.

* * *

The night proceeded to roll by rather quickly but not quick enough in Renato's opinion. He was starting to feel socially exhausted. His parents couldn't blame him because the constant stream of having to be polite and greet the one million and one guests that Daniela had invited was a very big pain in the ass.

Lilith and Renato both breathed out simultaneous exhausted sighs, "I can't drink anything, right?"

Renato glared at her lightly, which formed into a pout. "Noooo," he whined, "it's my birthday so you can't get an out if I don't get an out."

She sent him an incredulous, "Ehh… how about if I let you drink too—" Dante elbowed her side.

"Don't feed minors alcohol." He scolded.

She pouted and whined, "But it's the mafia anyway…" He stared at her expectantly. Dante found that just staring at her until she was so uncomfortable that she wanted to concede seemed to work like a charm.

Lilith huffed. "Fine…"

A satisfied smirk made its way onto his face, his point was made. The smirk was extremely brief, though, and he forcefully placed himself into his flawless poker face. A familiar face to him, but not to the other two, arrived quite late and had come over to greet the celebrant.

"Cavallone Ottavo." Dante greeted politely. The Cavallone chuckled, an overly friendly air dancing around him.

"Dante, the Cloud of the Vongola! Good day to you as well. Is this your boy?" He asked, gesturing to Renato who had attempted to seek refuge behind Lilith's legs.

The cloud nodded with a grunt to confirm his assumption and held out a hand for Renato to step forward and take. Renato hesitated for a moment, feeling his exhaustion chipping on his mood but soon sucked it up and took the offered hand.

Renato clutched at Dante's coat and smiled at the old mafia boss, "Good evening, Signore Cavallone." He rehearsed politely.

"Good evening to you as well, young man, and Happy birthday as well."

"Thank you, sir."

The Cavallone boss nudged a boy that was slightly older than Renato, in front of him. He dropped a hand on the boy's head. "This is my boy, young Sinclair. I do hope you can be friends in the future."

Clear warning signs were being launched at the older man and his son by the 8th generation of Vongola guardians from their spread-out positions around the ballroom. The younger boy clearly felt it and rightfully hesitated.

Lilith stepped forward and leaned down to be more level with both children, sending them both a comforting look before straightening herself up.

She smiled kindly with a hint of 'try-anything-and-die' glinting in her eyes. "Perhaps so, Signore Cavallone but I'm afraid it's getting quite close to midnight and I wish to bring my son to retire for the night."

The subtle signs of panic that appeared in his eyes didn't go unnoticed when he nodded reluctantly and swallowed stiffly.

"Right, of course. Please have a good night then, Signora Reaper, Signore Sinclair."

Staying true to her word, she let Dante take her by the arm back to her bedroom with Renato clutching onto her other hand.

* * *

That's were Daniela found them after the party had finished and everyone had left.

The trio was on the floor of Lilith's room.

Lilith was in a comfortable baggy looking silk shirt, *cough* likely Dante's, Renato was making good use of her lap as a pillow while dressed in boxers and a big t-shirt, also likely Dante's, and Dante himself was sitting ironically shirtless and in a pair of sweat pants with a towel around his neck, and his damp hair tied back loosely.

He sat directly opposite the other two with one of his legs crossed and the other pulled towards his chest. There were cards scattered everywhere between them. It was an intense 1v1 battle between both of his parents that Renato had his eyes glued on.

It got to the point where Lilith had a single card left and Dante had two. The smug smirk that bloomed across his face made Lilith pale several shades in the realisation of what he was going to do.

"Nononono, Dante…" she started with a nervous warning tone, she smiled weakly, "You know I love you right?"

He raised an amused eyebrow at the girl and twirled the card in his hands, "I'm sorry, Lilith but I have to."

She suddenly lost all fucks and started begging, "No, pleaaase no. I'm begging you, Dante! After all we've been through, this is how it's going to end?"

Renato was so immersed in the card game that he didn't have it in him to laugh. Daniela, however, full on snickered and fangirled at the sight but they didn't move to acknowledge her.

Dante shook his head with a solemn and sad look, "I'm truly sorry."

…

He placed the 4+ card down on the pile and stared her straight in the eye, leaning forward slightly and whispered a single very offending word.

_"Uno."_

Lilith's face flushed as she physically restrained herself from throwing a little well-deserved tantrum. He really just had to end the game with the meanest and cruelest move possible.

"Fu—udge you." She growled at him spitefully. He watched her silently with eyes glittering in amusement and delight.

Renato pushed himself up into a sitting position, crawled and plonked his chest over her lap, glaring at the opposing enemy.

"No, no, no!" The 10-year-old corrected, "Its 'fuck you', he deserves it."

* * *

**Omake:**

**Alternative Outcome: If Lilith actually went and tried to massacre the Carcassa**

The Shinigami was furious after hearing what had happened with Renato during the meeting. She would've brushed it off if it was just the kid but the mafia boss father?! No. Not allowed.

She shoved her bag into Dante's chest, "Hold my bag, I've got some bitches to kill."

Dante and Renato started to pale rapidly at her announcement.

"Wait, Lili—" Dante sighed, "There she goes…"

Renato stared at the previously occupied spot in front of him in bewilderment. "Would she really do it?"

"I'm not all too sure, kiddo."

The duo trailed the wayward mother of their makeshift family directly into the Carcassa base. They had barely made it when she stood completely open to attack in front of the Carcassa boss.

The said boss was trembling and gaping at the infamous and furious woman that stood before him.

She hissed at him and he flinched away.

Renato had this weird feeling of déjà vu which triggered a slight shiver down his spine. Dante raised an eyebrow at the boy briefly before turning his attention back to Lilith's interaction with Filipo Carcassa.

She stared the mafia boss down and jabbed a finger at him, "I declare war!"

Dante sighed. "You can't just say the word 'war' and expect anything to happen."

She snapped her neck to him and glared with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

"I didn't say it. I declared it." She snarked back matter-of-factly, before transferring her glare to the Carcassa boss and amplifying its scare factor.

Dante nudged the boy beside him and Renato tilted his head in question. The cloud leaned down to whisper in his ear, he nodded in acknowledgement.

"Mama, I'm hungry… Can we go home now?"

Lilith was at his side in an instant with her arms wrapped around his head and she was gently stroking his hair along its natural shape. Happy tears welled up in her eyes, "Ren~ You called me 'Mama'! Of course, we can go get food."

Dante nodded the signal discretely and Renato beamed at the Shinigami on command, sparkles spawning from his smile danced around his face. "Thanks, Mama!"

Lilith just melted.

She gently led him out of the room. "Oh, it's no problem, baby! You can ask me anything, okay?"

The Vongola cloud rolled his eyes and followed the pair to the door.

"A-ah, have a good day!" The mafia boss called out to them in an attempt to be polite.

Lilith's flowery expression of joy cracked, and she seethed a glare at him.

"Don't tell me what to do."

Renato let out a suppressed amused snort and immediately shot his hands up to cover his mouth. It didn't go unnoticed, though, and Dante reprimanded him with a flick to his forehead.

"Don't laugh, it'll only encourage her."


	6. Pet-ception

**To those thirty or so people who read my last chapter within the first 10 minutes or so of me posting it (It makes me happy to see you do so and I hope you're all still sticking around after by horrendous stunt), I apologize for its messy state when it first went up. **

**I have a bad habit of posting then editing and updating when I read the preview through.**

**Aaaanyway, if you want to, feel free to hop back and check out changes I put through. I added in some Kisuke dialogue and cut down some of my overly long and stretched out sentences that I tend to drop in for (some painful reason) to make it a little easier to read.**

**RIP writing quality **(╥﹏╥)

**_To kuu mochizuki .3 (ff doesn't like formatting ;-;)_****_: _Awww thanks so much! ^^ It makes me so happy that you're enjoying it.**

_**To Savage Kill: **_**Noooo, you're cute **( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ❤ ***cough***

* * *

It was a bright Saturday evening with a beautiful myriad of colours gracing the sky. Renato was lying face up, flat on the ground relishing in the few moments of rest before his inevitable training with his mother continued.

Over the past few months of training, Renato had gotten used to calling Lilith his mother, Dante his father and all the other 8th generation guardians his uncles. He didn't associate with all of Daniela's guardians that much, sans Dante, William and Kisuke, but they all grew fond of the kid as they had done for Timoteo.

"…hey, Mom?" He called out to the woman who was stretching out her body a few metres away from him. Lilith hummed to signal that she was listening. "Can I get a pet?"

She raised an eyebrow, "Like what? A dog? I don't think a normal dog or cat would survive in the house. How about a cerberus, or a basilisk? Maybe a dragon?"

He sweatdropped, was that even legal? Oh wait, they were the mafia, _nothing was legal_ but how, exactly would she find a dragon and whatever the other two were?

"… I don't know what the first two are, but could we just go to the pet shop and look?"

She blinked at him, "I suppose we could do that, but you need to ask Daniela and Dante for permission."

He nodded, "I can do that."

Flash forward to after dinner that night. Renato made his way to Daniela's office, dragging Dante along by the hand. The boy had barely managed to corner his _very difficult to catch_ father just before he disappeared after dinner.

Lilith strolled along happily behind the two.

An exasperated look graced the poor cloud's face as he let the little sun drag him to where ever he intended to go.

"What are you planning to do with me, Renato?"

The boy grinned brightly, "I need your help to convince Daniela to let me get a pet from Lilith!"

Dante paled a shade and snapped his attention to the flowery smiling **Shinigami** that was skipping along beside them.

Feeling his gaze on her, she gifted him with an airy smile and a way to happy giggle. A _giggle_. Lilith didn't fucking giggle.

"…what did you do?" He narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

Her smile never wavered, and she waved him off, "Mah~ You have so little faith in me, Dante." She placed a dramatic hand on her chest in mock hurt. "You hurt this poor lady's soul."

She was 100% planning something and he _knew_ that he wasn't going to like the sound of it one bit.

Renato finally released his arm to open the doors to Daniela's office. The Vongola sky greeted the three with a bright and kind smile, "Hello, you three! What can I do for you?"

Renato excitedly hopped over to her desk and leaned over the edge.

"Am I allowed to get a pet and keep it in the house?" he asked with eyes shining in hope.

Daniela's smile wavered slightly, and she struggled to keep it up genuinely, a nervous bead ran down her cheek. She laughed nervously and averted her gaze off to the side.

"U-uh, and um, where exactly do you intend on getting this 'pet' of yours, Renato?"

He beamed brightly like the sun he was, "Mama's going to take me to see some and we can choose!"

Both Dante and Daniela went rigid. Renato didn't know that his mother was, like, the literal physical manifestation of every child's nightmares, right…?

Daniela fell into a panic. LILITH HAD PROBABLY NEVER BEEN TO A NORMAL PET STORE BEFORE. And what was the next thing that she would think of doing to find a pet? Oh, simply the **SHINIGAMI REALM.**

"W-what type of pet were you thinking of getting, Renato?"

His face turned contemplative. With a finger to his chin, he visibly thought out loud, "Hmm… I'm not too sure. Mom said we could go check them out and we could choose something I liked if you guys said yes."

Dante faux coughed to reel in attention, "I don't particularly mind you getting a pet, but you have to take care of it yourself **and** don't get anything that you can't control and that has the potential to kill us all in our sleep."

When Lilith's shoulders slumped at his speech, he shot her a heavily accusing look which caused her to instantly straighten up and deny everything.

Rapidly waving her hands in front of herself and shaking her head, she denied everything profusely. "I swear, he asked me first. It wasn't my idea! I didn't have the intention of killing off the mean chef or the gardener bitch or the—"

Dante face palmed with a sigh of fond exasperation. "No, of course, you didn't. Right."

With a slight sheepish look on her face and a bead of sweat strolling down her temple, she grinned at him. "Y-yeah!"

Daniela buried her face into her hands. "By any chance did she suggest any particular pet to you, Renato?"

He nodded and made an affirmative noise, "Do you know what a Cerberus and a basilisk is?"

Two pairs of accusing eyes shot to the Shinigami. She immediately averted her eyes to the side with a nervous laugh.

"…you did not just suggest bringing a Cerberus or a basilisk into the house." Dante said in disbelief.

She had a guilty look on her face, "I'm sure it would've been fine."

"Fine, my ass!" Daniela snarked back. "It's a giant three-headed dog versus a giant snake that kills you if you look at it!"

"Come on, Daniela!" she huffed, her arms crossed in front of her chest, "It's not like I would have let it kill anyone important! It'd listen… to me anyway…"

The other adults in the room graced her with expectant and disapproving looks.

"Fine… I'll get him something small." She grumbled.

Dante gestured for her to continue and elaborate. She rolled her eyes, "I'll get him a lizard or dragon side-kick."

Renato's eyes sparkled in excitement, "Can I get a chameleon?"

Lilith dropped her arms to her sides and blinked at him, "Oh, uh, sure we can do that easy."

He grinned widely and both members of the 8th generation Vongola breathed out sighs of relief.

They were safe, the poor chef and gardener were safe, it was all fine. For now….

They think.

* * *

Lilith grinned at Renato and Renato grinned right back as they stood grinningly in the middle of Dante's office.

The said man was about to give up on life and work and just go back to sleep but he was sitting there buried in between stacks upon stacks of paperwork that Daniela dumped on him. He didn't even have the worst of it, each guardian was given a decent portion to finish but as one of the 'more academically inclined intellectuals as Daniela put it, he, along with Kisuke were dumped with the bigger stacks.

Now, usually it wasn't so bad because Lilith took a decent chunk off both his and Kisuke's hands as thanks for them taking the time off work to train with Renato but now because of the mother-son duo's planned adventure off into the literally deepest depths of hell, he had to do it all himself.

It should have been fine as he had been doing it for quite a while before he had even met Lilith but as painful as it was to admit, he had gotten used to the girl kidnapping half the pile for his own sake and now he was just dead tired.

"Are you ready kid?"

Renato puffed out his chest dramatically with his hands on his hips, "Aye, aye, captain!"

Lilith snickered in amusement.

"I can't _hear_ you!"

"AYE AYE CAPTAIN!"

Dante dropped his pen onto the paper and leaned back, an unimpressed look on his face.

"Shut up and just go, you two."

The pair grinned sheepishly, and Lilith reached out a hand to open up a portal in the corner of the room. The thing was ominous and gave off an eerily feel in its aura, for a comparison, I suppose you could think of it as like the darkness portal from kingdom hearts. Black flames and smoke surrounded the wormhole and Dante watched it with caution.

Renato was half excited and half terrified, but he was confident in Lilith that she wouldn't let anything happen to him on this trip. It was also only for a portion of the day, so it would be fine.

"It'll feel like time is passing at a normal rate but in reality, time will be running faster." She explained initially, "We will only be there for a few hours but by the time we get back, likely about three days or so will have passed."

Renato pressed his lips together and gave a stuff nod. Lilith smiled and nudged him in the side.

"Lighten up, Ren! We're going on an adventure and no-one will even think of hurting you while you're under my protection."

He sent her a worried look, "But how would they know that if I get lost or something?"

She huffed before humming in contemplation then moved to untie the yellow ribbon, she had hanging off her bag. She waved it in his face, "This, will be how they know."

Lilith leaned down, neatly wrapped it around his fedora and pinned it with a little Shinigami magic.

She stood up straight and grinned down at the boy, "There you go, dashing as always. Yellow suits you, by the way."

The little compliment made him light up and smile. "Thanks."

Lilith nodded to Dante as a goodbye and he returned the gesture. Renato presented him with a smile and a wave, "See you later!"

The cloud tilted his head at the boy with a soft smile. "See you later, stay safe."

"We will!"

Lilith offered a hand for the boy to take and he slipped his smaller hand into her own.

Then they took the step through.

* * *

Shivers racked down Renato's spine as a flush of threatening auras flooded his veins. With their initial arrival to the Shinigami Realm, they drew attention to themselves. Much to his surprise, this didn't happen because of him and his status as a human, it happened because the other Shinigami seemed to have a hell of a lot of respect for Lilith.

The lands of the Shinigami realm were very savanna-like, there were ruptures and cracks in the ground, dead trees and skeletons of animals he couldn't recognise at all. The types of Shinigami appearances ranged a significant degree, most of them took on human forms as the majority of worlds that they were assigned were overrun by humans.

But there were also others, such as coloured skinned aliens, mutant animals, heck even _angels_ were present somewhere in the lands but they all had a distinct darkness to them. The angels had black wings and the lions had greyed out fur, things like that.

Renato made sure to stay close to Lilith as they walked through the centre of the open lands. The other Shinigami made way for her and barely of them actually greeted her.

The first interaction that Renato witnessed was with a Shinigami named Madara. The man took on a human form and was honestly bone tinglingly terrifying and powerful, even his hair looked like it had the ability to stab him.

"Lilith." He greeted shortly. The woman smiled at him and nodded a greeting, "Madara, how are you?"

The man moved to walk alongside Lilith on the opposite side to Renato, he paused for a moment when he noticed the little boy.

He eyed him silently for a moment, "I'm fine. Who is the human child?"

Renato clutched Lilith's hand a little tighter and smile provided him with a comforting smile and squeeze of the hand.

"He's my brat that I took in. He's very talented for his age."

The spikey haired man dismissed him with a sharp, "Hn."

She grinned at him, "We're going to the castle to find him a chameleon partner, as requested!"

He sent her a flat look that spoke words of its own but more specifically a loud 'really…?'

After decades of 'hn.' language experience, she knew how to understand him no matter how much he reverted to monosyllables. Lilith had every intention of teaching Renato how to do so as well because no matter where she went there was usually at least one person in the world that spoke in that specific language.

"Yup! Know any chameleon packs?"

"Hn."

The intimidating man gave her a brief glance before trudging along faster with powerful steps.

Renato and Lilith shared glances and she shrugged before following along. He probably knew what he was doing, this was Madara after all, he usually knew what he was doing anyway.

As they arrived at the castle gates, Renato cringed away from it. If the aura that it was giving off wasn't so spooky, he'd be gaping at it in awe.

There were little gremlin looking creatures that opened the gates upon their arrival.

As soon as they walked through the front doors, the spooky feeling vanished and was replaced by awe. The foyer of the palace was basically a fantasy forest with fairies and flowers and all of those things.

Little animals ran past his legs as he pushed through the tall bushes to keep up with his mother.

"Woah, what is this place?" he asked with his eyes panning over all of his surroundings.

Madara stopped walking and burned down a thick layer of spider webs before continuing on. This startled the little sun and he winced at the heat.

Lilith smiled kindly at his curiosity, "This place is known as the castle of creatures. Depending on what permissions you have and the thought processes running through you, the greeting gremlins at the gate determine what rooms you are allowed to enter."

"Ohh, is it a safety mechanism?"

The fire breathing man nodded, "Lilith has the permissions to enter whichever lands she needs, however, the world that is under my dictation is directly linked to these realms by means of summons. It's several times less annoying to enter here with myself than to be reported that this idiot has blown up something to get to another realm."

Renato gaped at her and she laughed sheepishly.

"It's not that bad, it was only one time."

Madara sighed, "One time too many."

"The defence mechanism was created naturally by the combined powers of the creatures as a whole. Mostly to protect the pure and sacred creatures such as the seer toad or the unicorn's blood but is also used to keep them within their own boundaries. Having Lilith's pet basilisk running around the lands would not be pleasant."

"FYI, I think it'd be great."

The disbelieving looks she received from that statement were picture perfect. Now, if only she brought a camera…

"Yeah, great if you wanted to collect bodies for a morbid collection."

Renato grimaced, "…Mom, you're a little scary."

"What are you on about? I'm an angel."

"An angel of death, more like."

"Shut up Mada-baka."

* * *

Madara held an arm out to stop Lilith from moving any closer and reeled back before dropping a very distasteful move and wiping out a net of vines. This particular move was used by a man that was equally as green those vines and equally as dynamic as mother-son duo behind him. He didn't really know why he used it, but it worked, and it felt like it was right for the moment.

Anyway, before we get too off track, the sector that was hidden behind the vines was a large camp of chameleons.

The male Shinigami grunted to get their attention and gestured for the young boy to walk to the centre of the little open field. The trees that surrounded it were filled with fireflies and differently shaped and coloured chameleons. The grass was neatly kept and there were several flowers lying between the trees.

It really looked like a fantasy oasis.

Renato looked at Lilith silently for permission and she granted it with a slight nod. He then made his way carefully through the grass and stopped in the middle before glancing around.

He waited patiently for a while then turned to the Shinigami pair when nothing happened.

"Just wait, kid." Madara grunted out, "Summons choose their contractors, the contractors do not choose the summons."

He grimaced and nodded.

A few more minutes passed and Renato found himself feeling a little tired, it felt like something was draining his energy and he was struggling to keep awake. Lilith noticed this and called him back, Madara did not object when he eyed the little creature scaling up the boy's neck. The boy didn't seem to notice the reptile at all in his current state.

Renato dragged his feet back to his mother's side and stuffed his face into her stomach. He mumbled out a few incoherent words that lead to an exhausted-sounding, "I'm tired." from the boy in her arms.

The little green chameleon that sat on his fedora flicked its tongue at her cheekily. She rolled her eyes at the creature and poked its nose before kneeling down to let the boy climb on her back. At that point, Renato was passed out on his feet and Madara helpfully grabbed the back of his shirt and swung him onto Lilith's back.

She huffed out a brief thanks that he ignored in favour of walking off first. Lilith was sure that he didn't mind, he came here of his own volition after all.

Mission: Find a chameleon partner. Complete!

* * *

Seeing as Renato was completely out of commission thanks to the sneaky chameleon that was adjusting to his flames in the middle of the day. Lilith bid Madara farewell and headed back.

Madara didn't actually care much that he had just wasted a decent amount of time getting his pseudo little sister's kid a pet lizard. It actually felt slightly fulfilling for once in his long ass life.

He kind of hoped to see the kid again to teach him some tips and tricks for summons.

Dante was very relieved to see the pair back in the human realm but seeing Renato completely passed out with his flames bordering dangerously low levels made him extremely concerned.

Lilith comforted him with her words when she explained that this was often a normal reaction to summoning contracts between chosen animals and summoners. She pointed out the adorable little green chameleon that sat on Renato's fedora.

"This little guy is just adjusting his own chakra channels to align with Renato's flames. Usually, the harmonisation strength and characteristics determine the abilities the little guy has when working with Ren. It'll be interesting to see it once he wakes up."

Dante crouched down in front of the passed-out sun that was currently napping on his couch.

"Hmm… alright." He let out a tired breath when he pushed himself into a stand once again.

"So… how long have we been gone?"

Dante glanced at her from the corner of his eye, "As you predicted, it was three days plus or minus a couple of hours. It's 10 pm now."

"Ah… that's good then. This won't mess up his sleep schedule too much then."

"Given he wakes up before tomorrow morning, then yes, it won't."

Luckily for Renato and much to his parent's relief, Renato did wake up that next morning feeling very much more refreshed.

It was around about 10 am when he came to and both Lilith and Dante were sitting around him doing their own respective stacks of paperwork. Well, I mean, Dante was. Lilith was giggling to herself while reading some book with her long ago completed paperwork sitting beside Dante's own.

The little dip of the bed when Renato tiredly rolled himself into his mother's side was what alerted them to his grand awakening.

Dante left his paperwork and sat on the edge of the bed. He poked Renato in the shoulder with the back of his pen, "Are you awake yet, kiddo?"

Renato groaned and stuffed his face further into Lilith's side. "No." he grumbled back with his voice muffled by the shinigami's night dress.

Lilith snickered, "He's just like me, isn't it great?"

"It's wonderful." Dante drawled sarcastically, "All we ever needed was another one of you."

Lilith scoffed, "I'm great."

He sent her a flat unbelieving stare, "Uh huh." She rolled her eyes.

Seeing as the boy was attempting to go back to sleep, Dante jabbed the kid in the side making him screech when he hit the ticklish part. It was for his own good. If he slept any longer it would have gotten to the point where it was unhealthy for him. He had already been sleeping for a good 12 or so hours, his body didn't need to get used to sleeping that long at all.

Renato whined and stuffed his face back into it's original and comfortable position, "Why must it always be the cute ones (me) that suffer?"

The Shinigami chortled, "Bahahaha, he's totally mine."

The Vongola cloud just huffed. "I can't deny that statement at all." He nudged the little boy over, "Come on, Renato, we need to get some food in your stomach before we knock you around and send you to William."

Renato lifted his head and turned to face the cloud with a half-hearted glare, "You suck at convincing people, you know."

Dante deadpanned at the boy, "Right, uh-huh. Now, get dressed."

He pouted then pushed himself into a sitting position with a huff. Dante stood up straight and wandered to Renato's closet to pull out some decently presentable clothes for him.

"You know, I hate you with every inch of my being right now. I could be sleeping."

Dante raised an amused eyebrow and chuckled, "That's not a lot of inches, Ren."

Ren whined, "My point, though!"

Dante chucked his son's clothes at his face. "Try again in another decade."

* * *

As they were seated around the very familiar and regular dining table for breakfast, a little green figure poked it's head out of Renato's collar, startling the hell out of the sun.

"Wo-oah!" he exclaimed, fumbling around a bit and scooping up the lizard into the palms of his hands. He lifted up the reptile to eye level.

The little chameleon poked it's tongue happily at the boy's cheek. Renato beamed, "You chose me? You actually chose me?"

The chameleon blinked a few times before glowing brightly and shifting into a thumbs up glove.

Renato _gaped,_ Timoteo gaped and Lilith whined. "I think I love you." He whispered to his new friend in awe.

Lilith's shoulder slumped. She was getting one-upped by the chameleon she got for him, come on! She huffed, very pouty, and stood up, "Okay!" she called to attention, every head at the table turned to look at her.

"If you like me more than the lizard, raise your hand."

Daniela's hand shot up and Kisuke waved his own up in the air as if he was wanting to answer a question in class. Lilith gestured him the 'go-ahead'.

His hand dropped, "What if I don't like you?"

She crossed her arms and glared at him. "Then raise your standards."

The Shinigami turned to Renato with an expecting look causing him to shoot his hand up immediately, she pouted.

"I'll just pretend I never saw you hesitate…" she sulked before sliding back into her chair.

Daniela grinned at her, "It's okay, Lilyyyy! I love you!"

Tears of joy rolled down her cheeks and she reached out to the Vongola sky dramatically. "My one and only true love, Daniela!"

Dante sighed in exasperation. What was he? A joke? He probably was… feels bad.

The other men around the table sent him sympathetic looks but the resident Vongola mist grinned and sent him extravagant 'don't-worry-man-I'm-the-best-wingman-ever' gestures.

Kisuke scribbled a couple of things on a piece of note paper and folded it into a neat paper aeroplane before launching it to the cloud. Dante caught it out of pure curiosity and peeled it open.

Hmm… interesting.

He raised an eyebrow at the mist and Kisuke mouthed 'just pass it to her!' His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Kisuke's eyes screamed a whine, 'come on, trust me!' he mouthed further.

Dante _knew _he was going to regret ever trusting the stupid mist but even so, he still found himself following his suggestion and passed the paper over to her.

The 8th generation mist and sun discreetly high-fived and grinned at each other. Dread built up in the pit of his stomach, that mist had saved his life several times as an ally... he wouldn't choose to kill him now, right?

Daniela eyed the paper curiously and Lilith tilted her head in question.

"What's this?" she asked him as she peeled it open.

"His to-do list," William replied quickly and in the cloud's stead, adding in his own few cents into the scheme.

Dante's jaw dropped, fuck no. He did not just— oh my god. They had this planned all along.

Lilith pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing in a clear sign of genuine confusion.

"…but this only has my name on it?"

The table went silent and literally the whole table, sans Timoteo unsurprisingly, just stared at her expectantly, only to be disappointed due to her lack of a reaction.

Renato's shoulders sagged; his parents were his ultimate OTP that was always half sailed off. He whined, "Oh, come on. Even I got that one!"

Lilith puffed her cheeks at him, "Why don't you explain then?"

Dante's hand flew to shut the boy up before he could babble it out. "Yeah, no. We're good."

She, along with the suspicious mist-sun pair, huffed in disappointment and Lilith stood from her seat to storm over to the kitchen and make herself a drink, only God knew how much she needed caffeine right then and there.

"Can you get me one of whatever you're getting too?" Renato asked the woman as she disappeared into the next room.

Lilith poked her head back into the dining room, "How do you drink your coffee, Ren?"

Kisuke threw an arm around the kid's shoulders.

"As dark and bitter as our respective souls, get me one too please?"

The Shinigami gifted him with a slightly too pleasant look, "But of course, Kisuke. I'd be honoured."

She returned with a tray full of three cups, her own cappuccino was placed at her seat before she moved to give the other two their drinks.

As per requested she placed the glass of milk in front of Renato and slid the black coffee in front of the mist.

She smiled with sarcastic sparkly and flowery effects, "Enjoy your drinks as requested, have a nice day."

...

(Kisuke swapped their drinks and Renato discovered a new-found love for black coffee AKA espresso.)


	7. Plot Fillers

**A/N: Chapter 7 is a series of side stories, the original plot will continue in the next chapter but please enjoy.**

* * *

**\- Lolanthe's Story -**

**Lolanthe** and Lilith's souls had been sisters for several millennia. As humans, as cats, as fish to even as sea urchin. They had always come back together in some way or another.

As the older sister soul, Lolanthe has typically always been born and had died before her younger sister and where ever her soul reincarnated in, her sister's would follow.

In the Shinigami case, it really was all Lolanthe's fault that they ended up there. Shinigami are not randomly chosen nor are they taken as those that commit serious sins, usually at least. The first step in the selection process for the job as a Shinigami is finding those that already are familiar with the process.

Those people being the humans and creatures that Shinigami reveal themselves to, and associate themselves with.

In Lolanthe's case, it was from the time when her soul inhabited the body of a human. She had been a very rebellious teenage girl that originated from a very religious family. Her family had been very insistent on her to be arranged to be married to her significantly older cousin for the purposes of her religion, needless to say, she didn't take that very well.

If she had gone a different path to deal with her situation, Lilith would never had been a chosen soul but Lolanthe had chosen what she did. Her first point of rebellion against her family was to reach out to the one being that her parents despised, and that was Death, the Shinigami.

To the teen's utmost surprise, the man actually appeared.

Their story was not one of love, though. The man had seen the little girl as his adorable pet sister if anything friendly. He was quite the strange person, slightly creepy, had an odd obsession with control and was irritatingly smart but Lolanthe adored him anyway.

His name was Hikari, a surprisingly Japanese name for an entity that was wandering the lands of Europe.

The time they spent together did not last very long as Lolanthe was killed after trying to prevent one of his schemes that he deemed 'rightious'. Hikari had been obsessed with creating a perfect world by killing any and all people that he, himself believed was a criminal. This included any real criminals, such as thieves, serial killers, hitmen as well as high school bullies, parent's that hit their children for the first time and teenage backstabbers. It was morbid for Lolanthe to witness and watch when these people, _who still had a chance to change_, were murdered in cold blood.

When Hikari killed Lolanthe, he killed himself. His position was an unsolved mystery within the Shinigami Realm and no-one knew why he was removed for doing so.

That was the end of the short human life of Lolanthe, the only life where she never reconnected with her sister soul.

* * *

Her soul was pulled from the regular batch to the Shinigami Realm as a chosen soul by non-other than the Shinigami King himself. He had been eyeing the soul for reincarnation upon reincarnation for it's unusually potent and condensed amount of pure soul flames but as much as he wanted to, it wasn't his right to take in an arbitrary soul before training.

So, she was dropped off to and sent to the Shinigami Academy a whole decade before her assigned enrolment. During her school years, she had always made herself to come out as an intimidating figure and this, of course, lead to her social life being rather dull and her friends to be rather limited.

Her first and only friend was a boy named Madara. When they first met, they were both ostracized by society for being anti-social and much too prodigious for a regular Shinigami. No-one liked it when they were shown up at all, but other Shinigami resolved themselves to becoming, at the very least, friendly acquaintances and with the occasional ambitious person, they would be allies.

Lolanthe and Madara took that generation of Shinigami by storm and proved themselves to be the brightest in history.

Within her final year of her 5-decade degree was when her sister soul finally made her appearance. The little series of chimes that alerted the older sister of the presence of the younger rung suddenly during a training workshop and Lolanthe all but bolted out of the room with Madara dragged along by an arm.

Lolanthe _adored_ her sister, to her, she was the cutest creature that she ever laid eyes on.

Like most Shinigami, Lilith had been selected a born into the Shinigami Realm as a young toddler, so Lolanthe, who was about 500-years-old or so and physically 20, was very keen to spoil the girl to bits. Even Madara ended up growing a soft spot tumour on him because of the cheeky adorable kid.

After class, either Madara or Lolanthe or both would go to pick the girl up to drop her off at her dorms. She was ecstatic that they, being the top students of the academy, would do such a thing for a no-name first-year girl like her and she loved them for it.

She beamed at the hedgehog haired man from where she stood at the front doors of the first-decade building. Madara was currently hovering around the wired and spiked gates when class for the children had ended.

"Madara!" She called out to him brightly, her eyes shining with glee and delight when he scooped her up and dumped her on his shoulder.

The girl was much too bright and happy for this kind of life and it made him rather irritated that she was stuck in the place.

Lolanthe had never told him that it was because of her that her sister soul had followed her to the Shinigami Realm and Madara would not be informed of the fact until shortly after Lolanthe's unfortunate passing.

The older sister made it her duty to make sure that Lilith had the best possible life within possible reach and would do almost anything to achieve that.

After graduation, Lolanthe and Madara were assigned their own separate worlds to work in and their small little dysfunctional fell apart. Despite this occurring, the newly graduated pair always came back to visit year after year to visit her on her birthday.

* * *

"Happy birthday, little sister!" Her cheerful voice echoed through the dorm hallways.

Multiple students poked their heads out into the hallway to see what was going on but after it happened again on the same day, every year, they had long gotten used to it and barely reacted with more than an exasperated eye roll.

"Lola, welcome home!"

It was that very reason why the passing of Lolanthe made such a powerful impact on the student body.

It was within her 4th decade at the academy when the bells fell dead, and the beautiful and peaceful chimes never sounded again.

Lolanthe didn't come back that year and Lilith was distraught. She was not the only one, her peers had eventually wandered to her room to ask her what had happened, knowing that if any student knew, it would be her.

It wasn't long before rumours had gotten around that the eccentric ex-dux and student body president of the 475th generation had been killed and removed.

Madara was the one to confirm her suspicions of her sister's passing and it was also the same man that had pulled strings within the higher powers to assign the younger sister to the same world.

Whilst it pained him to know and to have to accept the fact of his best friend's passing, he knew he had to.

It was his duty as her friend to respect and honour her memory, his heartfelt duty to the eccentric tomboy asshole that he struck back his feelings for.

Her legacy would fall to her sister and her memory would remain a joyful one for the 476th to 480th generations as the woman who always brought light into the dorms every year.

Her Shinigami life would forever be etched into history as the anonymous protagonist that would guide all the generations to come.

* * *

**\- Talbot's story -**

Now, this story is a story about adventure and the gathering of knowledge.

**Talbot** had always been a constant within the Shinigami society, his long life and adventurous achievements making the old man very famous and often sought for.

His adventures were not mindless explorations or particular material farming for his inventions, he sought knowledge and a place to call home, but his travels were placed on pause when an unusual summon, directly from the Shinigami King, was sent through to him.

One does not simply ignore such a summon, so Talbot promptly responded to it.

The Shinigami King was the only other constant that remained across the generations and Talbot considered him a very powerful and rather close friend. In response to such, the King found it within his abilities to do the same for the equally as old other man.

The King had never taken on a humanoid form, rather, he preferred to take on a much more intimidating position as a skull-based entity. His body was attached tightly his surroundings by chains and what looked like to be, elongated and screaming spirits and souls. His head was that of a single giant skull and his body was littered with significantly smaller skulls, it was a terrifying sight, but Talbot had seen it so many times that it didn't affect him anymore.

"...What have you called me here for, old friend?" His aged and unused voice came out as rather lightly hoarse but clear enough to the naked ear.

In complete contrast to the crackly voice, was the Shinigami King's booming and clear voice of authority.

"The world of the humans that use the ideal amount of soul flames, have you been there?"

The old man tilted his head, "You mean of Lolanthe's world?"

"The world that Lolanthe had been assigned, yes."

Talbot frowned, he had a feeling that he was not going to like what he was going here. "Lolanthe has passed, Talbot. Madara of one of the more difficult soul flame overuse worlds has requested that young Lilith, a 4th-decade student, to be assigned to the same place."

He furrowed his eyebrows together, "One does not simply graduate at 4th"

"I know, that is why I am requesting you to watch over the passing of souls for the meantime. I have decided to honour Madara's request in light of Lolanthe's achievements."

"…That will not be a problem."

"Thank you, old friend. Please watch over the girl."

Lolanthe had been successful during the decades that she ruled. She established the effectiveness of automated passing and had heavily lessened the workload for all current and future Shinigami. For those worlds that were less than overused, her teachings would be considered priceless.

"We all owe Lolanthe much more than we can provide. This is the least I can do to repay her for her noble works."

To him personally, she provided him with a place to call home. Nothing could be enough to repay her for that.

* * *

It was not the first time that Talbot has inhibited this world and it certainly would not be the last.

He had been with Lolanthe during her time over coursing the life of Vongola Primo and his generation and had left shortly after. It felt rather empty knowing that the energetic girl was now lost to the Shinigami forever.

One decade, he reasoned to himself. The young soul was nearing the end of her 4th decade of schooling, she would be to take over after her 5th. He only had to maintain the wayward souls for barely over a single decade.

He thought that it would be simple, but he soon discovered the reasons for Lolanthe's passing. It infuriated the typically calm old man when he discovered the cause. It had honestly been several centuries since he felt this furious with a single soul, a single unusual soul that ruined everything.

Whilst Lolanthe had such a successful life as a Shinigami, she had so much more potential that she didn't have the chance to act upon in the time she was provided with, it just felt unfair that such a person was left alive.

A swindler with power was dangerous and Lolanthe was so… so **naïve** that it was bound to occur. It was unfortunate that she fell to such at all.

The day that young Lilith had arrived in the world was a day of peaceful relaxation for the old man. The past decade had been full of disastrous fake soul flames and misuse of power that it was very difficult for the non-shinigami to withhold.

The Vindice were an issue that Talbot had only scraped the surface of and as such had left alone. Parallel world travellers and time travellers were beginning to bloom within humans, and he was completely occupied in finding out _why._

The reason came in the form of supernatural jewellery and machinery much to Talbot's delight and despair. It was something he could work on and control but it was a gigantic and time-consuming project on its own.

The bounding of souls to rings formed hell rings and were disgusting forms of power. Over the decade, Talbot had been able to swipe 5 of these rings and dismantle the attached souls, the rest remained untouched and trapped to their respective owners.

That owner was too powerful for him to extract the rings from. With the power of the powerful souls that were bound to those pieces of jewellery, he needed to find another way.

When Lilith came to him with regards to the world-holders of the world, he was beginning to feel the light of hope shine upon this world. With the young Shinigami's help and the enlistment of the Vindice under her thumb, creating a device to substitute the human batteries known as the arcobaleno should have been a possible task, in fact, it shouldn't have been difficult at all.

If he were to complete such a task, having the arcobaleno and ex-arcobaleno along with Lilith on his side, it would be possible to free those compressed and trapped souls.

When she returned to report that she had gone to see Checker Face, it was not unexpected that he had denied helping him in the task. He appeared to have a rather hate-filled relationship with humans, yet he had married several of them and was taking care of the world-holder for the said humans.

He showed very mixing signals and Talbot vowed to keep an eye on the man and his movements.

As the owner of both soul-bounders and world-holders, the creature was much too suspicious to be left alone.

* * *

**\- Renato's story -**

Despite the horrid actions of his parents, **Renato** really did love them to a point but there was no cure for insanity.

From when he was born, to until he was about 4-years-old, he never saw his father. Renato's mother was a kind and caring soul to him and he fully believed that he would live a happy and comfortable life with her.

This all changed when his 5th birthday hit.

"Scream." His father demanded with a hiss, assaulting him with a slap when he refused to do so. His mother sat in a luxurious-looking chair off to the side with a pleasant smile on her face, she was enjoying the show.

Tears were welling up in his eyes that he barely held back upon command.

They took pictures of him and his mother took some with him when he was beat-up and near unconscious. It was revolting and Renato didn't realise when he finally started thinking that maybe this wasn't normal.

His saving grace was when his father got bored with his lack of response, his physical pain tolerance had increased by tenfold and his throat hurt so much that he could barely speak.

Even though his mother enjoyed his pain, he could help but drown in guilt as she was turned on as the next target. He watched the woman scream in pleasure and pain as the head maid carried him away, he wanted to vomit.

The old lady that served the rich household as the head maid was threatened into secrecy. She was the only one that took true care of Renato, helped him bathe, cleaned his wounds and fed him what she could find.

If it wasn't for her, Renato was positive that he would've died.

The old lady gathered the trustworthy staff into the basement kitchen, one night when she picked up Renato after being given permission.

The owners of the house knew nothing about this meeting and nothing about their plan. The maids were all required to wear rather long dresses and they would use their clothes to their advantage.

That night, they had all unanimously agreed that they would set their young master free. Young Renato at age 7, understood and agreed to their plan as well, despite being rather beat up at that current moment.

He was done with the beatings and just didn't want to be here anymore. The staff sympathised with him and wanted to leave the place as well, but their contracts were changed and they were locked in for life.

Contract changes were illegal in the government scheme, but this was the mafia and there was nothing to protect mansion staff from internal contract changes. The most reinforcement that occurred in the mafia was between families or contracts with freelancers, if those were tinkered with, the person in the wrong would be promptly eliminated.

"We will get you out of the gate, young master. However, we cannot do anything further for you." The old lady presented him with a familiar sack of coins.

His secret stash of pocket money that he had collected over the couple of years, it was noticeably heavier than he remembered.

The younger maid to his left smiled kindly at the boy, "We all put in a little bit to help as much as we can."

He nodded in understanding.

The head maid kneeled in front of Renato to be at eye-level, she was holding back tears.

"I wish we could help you more, young master… Once you get out, you need to find a freelancer that looks like they would help you, okay?" He nodded. "I know that this is selfish of us, but please place a hit on your father."

His eyes widened before turning hard barely a second later. His eyes filled with determination, no-one else, not him, not the staff that were the only ones that were nice to him would need to suffer anymore.

He stiffly nodded once more.

Tears ran down the woman's cheeks as the echoing gratitude from all the people present, bounced off the walls.

"Thank you, young master. Good luck."

* * *

One of the guards by the gate presented the boy with a bingo book before they split ways. He gave the boy a comforting grin, "A list of all the strongest fighters in the underworld are in there, good luck, young master."

Renato let out a staggering breath. The moon was bright and high in the sky, and the residential streets were borderline pitch black. When he found the first street light, he lingered around in the shadows near it so that he wasn't completely blind.

He leaned behind the pole and peeled the bingo book open.

As he flicked through the pages, dread was starting to pile up in the pits of his stomach. All these people looked terrifying and as if they would've just shot him for looking at them.

But then, the pages started showing the strongest of the strong. The top-ranked fighters with 'flee on sight' remarks and noticeably higher ranks seemed much more, friendly and accepting to him. It was mind-boggling that it worked out that way.

_\- Vongola Ottavo, Daniela di Vongola and a compiled list of her guardians were present on the back pages as the highest-ranking individuals of the underworld associations._

_\- The Reaper, name currently unknown. _

Those were the ones placed on the far back pages of the book and some of the nicer looking people. He would just hope that he would find someone that would help him before his father sought out assassins to kill him or take him back. He wouldn't let the old maid lady and the staff at the mansion down.

It was clear that luck was on his side when the face of _The Reaper_ walked down the very residential street that he was sitting in. He had to act fast and he placed himself boldly in front of her, blocking her path.

A risky move both in her opinion and in his own, but he couldn't risk being ignored.

He huffed and puffed to re-catch his breath before presenting the woman with his money and his request. His heart dropped in defeat when the woman handed it back to him.

He felt like a failure.

Renato was startled when the scooped him up onto her shoulder, mumbling something about food before killing.

When she took him with her, he was so relieved to the point where he almost started sobbing, but as a person with plenty of practice in the ways of emotion suppression, he sucked it up.

He couldn't be more grateful that lady luck was smiling down upon him for this one time.

* * *

**I decided to give a little backstory with regards to some of the important characters but after I finished, I found that the chapter was a little short in comparison to the others (by like 1.5k or so). I wanted it to make it somewhat consistent so I added in a little special for curious souls such as  
****_kuu mochizuki_. (I hope this answers your question too ^^)**

* * *

**\- A glimpse into the far future – Tsuna -**

It had been decades since Lilith left Renato to his own devices in favour of completing her own tasks concerning research. She had collaborated with Talbot and he had assigned her the task of observing, overseeing and collecting difficult-to-find abilities and materials needed for the project.

Lilith had positioned her home base in Mafia Land and had purchased a lengthy pre-paid hotel room at the same hotel she had been loyal to for the past few decades.

The same counter lady that had greeted her and Renato that one night, still continued to do so as a significantly older lady. The old woman may have raised a few eyebrows at her due to her still remaining youthful looks but chose never to comment about it.

Whilst she never stayed in one place for long, but for this particular trip, she couldn't help but drag her palm down her face and sigh in exasperation when she took her first steps out of the hotel the next morning.

It—it was just so _Renato_, to have balloons up of his baby face and welcome signs to greet him at the docks. It made her think back to the time where she was terribly famous, not that she got all the loving attention, but rather most people feared her which was even better.

It was a bright and sunny summer day and Lilith didn't have much planned, so she decided to dress rather casually. It basically consisted of a plain black u-neck sleeveless-shirt tucked into a magenta midi skirt, simple and more comfortable for a hot day.

She had this odd urge to eat sugar that morning so her first stop was going to be that cute little candy floss stall near the front of the theme park.

After she paid and begun to walk away, nibbling on her purchase she was halted by a familiar voice.

"Ah— it's Mama." She turned to face the voice and was most surprised to see Ren with a group of teenagers and one of their mothers.

"Eh?! That's your mom?" The brunet boy yelled in disbelief, and in Japanese?

She blinked curiously at the group before a smile split across her face, "Ren," she greeted, "And… friends."

The same boy's shoulders sagged. "He beats me up and calls it tutoring, I don't think we're friends." He tried to explain.

Lilith snorted and Ren smirked, "No pain, no gain, right Mama?"

She grinned at him brightly.

"Exactly!"

The fluffy haired boy sighed in defeat, but Lilith waved him off.

"…Tsunayoshi-kun, right?" Reborn nodded and toddled over to her before raising his arms to be picked up. She rolled her eyes, some things you never grow out of apparently.

She scooped him up with one hand and lifted him to sit on her shoulder, as he was too small to sit on her hip. He reached out for her sugary treat and she brought it closer to him so he could grab some.

"From left to right, that's Yamamoto Takeshi, Gokudera Hayato, Dame-Tsuna, Ranking Prince Fuuta, Sawada Nana-san, Miura Haru and Bianchi. The brats are Lambo Bovino and I-pin." The sun explained.

The Shinigami smiled a greeting to the group, having passed the remainder of her candy floss to her son to finish for himself.

Nana walked up to her happily and grabbed both of her hands, "Mah~ It's so nice to finally meet, Reborn-chan's Mama! You're so young too, you can call me Nana!"

Lilith sweat dropped awkwardly, trying to piece together Japanese honorifics in her head before she messed them up. "A—ah, yeah. It's nice to meet you too Nana-san. You can call me Lilith."

Ren snorted in amusement causing her to send him a half-hearted glare.

The little girl in a bright lime dress hopped along to greet her as well.

"Hahi! Reborn-chan's Mama, it's a pleasure to meet you!"

All this social interaction was making her uncomfortable, she didn't know when the last time she was surrounded by so many happy and eccentric people. Maybe, when Ren was still a kid?

"It's my pleasure as well, Miura-san…"

Having recognised her from the beginning, both Bianchi and Gokudera sent the Shinigami respectful bows to which she smiled pleasantly and awkwardly in response.

Too many new people in such a short period of time was borderline exhausting.

When the group was _finally_ ready to disperse, Ren informed Tsunayoshi that he needed to complete the paperwork to be allowed into the island. Lilith narrowed her eyes at this claim but zipped her lips up and threw out the key when she saw Ren's pleading 'please-hush' look that he was sending her.

Bidding the rest of the group goodbye, Lilith lead the Vongola heir to the information counter to drop them off before parting ways with them.

She raised an arm to gesture them through the glass doors. "The receptionist lady in there can help you with your paperwork. I'll have to leave you here, though."

She turned her head to the side, sheepishly mumbled under her breath and shrugged, "I'mnotactuallymeanttobehere, but whatever."

Reborn let out an exasperated sigh and she sent him a look, "Hey, they didn't require passes to enter the island when I first came here so I'm sure it's fine anyway."

He rolled his eyes and kicked Tsuna through the door.

"Hurry up, Dame-Tsuna!"

"HIIE, aren't you going to say bye to your mom?" he whined as he dragged his feet through the glass doors.

"I'm not going with you, Dame-Tsuna. Good luck." The poor boy was left in disbelief.

"EH?!"

With Ren on her shoulder, Lilith sauntered over to the hidden subway that lead to the training grounds she used to use long ago. Now, she believed Collonello, the rain arcobaleno, was taking care of it.

The train was still stationary, so she let her son down on one of the seats and dragged open one of the windows.

He eyed her suspiciously, "What are you doing, Mama?" She simply smiled.

"I like the feeling of the wind, so I'm going to sit on top."

"Ah—"

"—Ugh!" Tsuna grunted as he was tossed into the train. By this time, Lilith was long gone from his sight.

"Reborn!" He complained, "You knew this would happen all along didn't you?!"

The arcobaleno smirked, "We're going to the hidden Mafia Land, you'll find out about it once we get there."

As the train pulled to a stop, the tutor-student duo hopped out and observed the rocky terrain. Lilith slipped off the roof of the train and moved to analyse her old favourite training spot.

Collonello was seemingly taking good care of it, the plants that surrounded the area were still nice and alive, even the whirlpool of doom was still going.

"Nice of you to show up, kora!" Collonello greeted the Vongola heir, "State your name!"

Lilith grinned at the sight of him, "Collonello!" she called over to him with a wave. His grin wavered slightly in surprise, "Oh, Lilith! I hope you found the training grounds to still be in good condition."

She gifted him with a closed eye smile, "Yeah, good job. It's just as good as it used to be."

Tsuna stared at the pair in bewilderment. "You know each other?!"

Reborn made a noise, affirming his question.

"This used to be Mama's favourite training spot. She bought this whole portion of the island so she could let loose."

The Vongola heir gaped at her to which she responded with a peace sign and a grin.

"Use it well, Tsunayoshi-kun."

"Wait, use it—?!"

He was interrupted by a pair of lethal dropkicks to the face, sending him flying into the whirlpool.

"Yeah, as my toy, I mean as my student, you can't go around not properly utilising my Mama's training grounds."

Tsuna flailed in the water trying to stay afloat.

"You're toy?!" He cried out.

Lilith smiled, visibly very amused but an air of sadness lingering in her eyes.

"Grow strong and pursue Dani's legacy, okay young Vongola?" she whispered.

Ren patted her knee in comfort, "Don't worry, Mama. I'll train him into a good boss."

She lightly patted the top of the fedora he had treasured for a long, long time.

"I know you will, Ren."

* * *

_**To Tigaier:**_** Thanks so much for your support and I'm glad you like it! I hope it's not at all creepy that I checked out your profile but I'd be super keen to read that Angelo delle Rose story of yours~ Can't wait till you get around posting that. No rush, though xD;**


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